I've been in the software industry 40 years and have felt this way from time to time. Some of the suggested ideas have worked at different times, e.g. when I wa

I've been in the software industry 40 years and have felt this way from time to time. Some of the suggested ideas have worked at different times, e.g. when I was doing not-so-interesting contract work, extracurriculars make a big difference. Other times, picking up other programming styles, frameworks, etc have reignited interest followed by disappointment from not being able to use it at my day job, but ultimately changing the way I think and work with mainstream languages. Management track definitely didn't work for me. One thing I've always tried is to align the companies I work for with my values over pay raises (except for a contracting stint experiment). I don't know how much that matters but I've rarely had trouble getting up and doing a day's work. I'm now at a large company continuing on an IC track. It's a bit tricky 'managing-up' etc, but I am finding a way to be effective by trying to get myself on projects I find interesting or challenging, as well as better ways to scale myself via writing high-level documentation, giving talks/demos, or lots of pair-programming to get aligned on tech culture. This probably only works because I don't think too much about how this or that is so ineffective/inefficient etc but rather frame it as a puzzle or technical problem to be solved within the arbitrary constraints of the organization. I don't do well with office politics which sometimes blow up in my face, but usually able to continue with the technical aspects of getting things done. Caring about and for your teammates and other people you work with (especially the non-technical ones) makes a big difference in how smoothly things go, or important things seem. I don't follow ML/crypto/etc other than on HN with a sense of 'we can do that now!?" and smh wait and see attitudes, without thinking that these should have any impact on my work anytime soon. I wonder how much this kind of problem is more/less prevalent depending on whether you value internal or external validation? All this is to say that this could be a long and recurring problem and you can look deep and wide to find different things that make it less important in your life or find a way of making it interesting again. One thing that's self-defeating is applying current apathy level to dismissing potential perks. Good luck!