It sounds like you're maturing, and passion is mostly for young people who haven't done many things in life yet. Most people after 30 are just clocking in in th

It sounds like you're maturing, and passion is mostly for young people who haven't done many things in life yet. Most people after 30 are just clocking in in their dev jobs, without caring about it in the slightest. BTW that's why companies want young people (and why Zuck famously said that people over 30 are useless for Facebook) - they're still in this narrow window where they can get excited about work that's objectively rather unexciting. I wouldn't put that much stock in what you're colleagues are saying, esp. if you only know them from remote calls. Most people understand that this industry demands "passion", so they know it'd be very stupid to admit that they just don't care. Also, if you're in the US, work is religion and if you admit that you don't care about it, it's basically like admitting that you don't believe in Allah while living in an Islamic state - at the very least, your social status will drop. There might be some other explanations too, besides outright lying. Some colleagues might be in denial, some might still be young. Finally, some might have this rare trait where they can genuinely get excited by solving similar, mundane code puzzles year after year (reportedly, lots of people in coding jobs take Adderal etc. to zombify themselves into this state, for the sake of making money).