> I think the reason, plain and simple, is that most developers aren't really in it for the passion anymore, but rather the money. Anecdata: I had a job recen

> I think the reason, plain and simple, is that most developers aren't really in it for the passion anymore, but rather the money. Anecdata: I had a job recently that paid competitively, but the boss soon replaced interesting work with boring work (for me: writing boilerplate that's already been solved a thousand times over, or any FE work), so my passion petered out, which was quite obvious to everyone involved, so the relationship ended. However, I'm with a client now, and we're building something really cool (using LLMs; I get access to H100 soon; etc) and I'm working every spare minute I can get away with, without being paid for overtime. I feel like a "hacker" again with this role, learning new things, stretching the capabilities of the system given various constraints, and every second link I open in my browser is arxiv. (That said, I grew up in South Africa, where cyber laws lagged behind the world's for a good few years, so we knew every trick in the book, yet were untouchable, haha!)