This happens all the time to me as well. I think the flip side of this is that, for most of us, it's very hard to learn new and interesting stuff in our paid s

This happens all the time to me as well. I think the flip side of this is that, for most of us, it's very hard to learn new and interesting stuff in our paid software engineering roles. Day to day tends to be dominated by maintaining code you didn't write, dealing with business concerns, or greasing the tiny wheels in the big machine that your team covers.