Very early in my programming career I still couldn't decide whether I want to do programming or graphic design. I worked for an online game written in ActionSc

Very early in my programming career I still couldn't decide whether I want to do programming or graphic design. I worked for an online game written in ActionScript (Flash) and was designing armors and some other in-game objects. I also participated in the game's forum on behalf of game's admins where they collected and discussed player's requests and suggestions for in-game new features. My ICQ number was thus available to the wide audience as I was sometimes the focal point of player's complaints or requests. One day a player I didn't know personally contacted me on ICQ, and his avatar featured a piece of headgear I designed. I had tears standing in my eyes knowing that someone valued my work so much they actually decided to use it to represent their online identity. Never since have I been so close to the situation that whatever I did mattered. My wife works for the government (also in IT sector), but she has better job satisfaction than I have in the sense of knowing that whatever she does has any impact at all. In my case, I'm automating testing and deployment of a piece of software that's essentially exclusive in its market niche. So much so that customers have no idea how bad it actually is, since they have nothing to compare it to. The testing of the software I work on is outright worthless, so whether it's more automated or not -- it will have no impact on the outcome. Not to mention that the biggest problems with the software are in its design, in the decisions that went towards the core elements of it, that, at this point, nobody dears even to question, let alone to reverse them. So, it sucks. It's going to suck. And it's going to suck for a very long time in the very same way because no replacement is coming. But, hey, I get a visa! And a permanent contract! Yee-haw!