As a software engineer, I like to work on interesting problems (this includes 'new' paradigms and 'obscure' algorithms), make users happy to feel I'm doing some

As a software engineer, I like to work on interesting problems (this includes 'new' paradigms and 'obscure' algorithms), make users happy to feel I'm doing something useful, make sure the code is elegant so I (and fellow programmers) can appreciate it, and will understand it in a few months. The way I see it, creating value is a nice by-product. It may be what pays the bills but it's not the "fun" part, and certainly not the reason I went into programming / software engineering.