On the other hand, if you're paying by the hour... But honestly, as a more experienced developer I don't NEED to be as interested as I did when I was a newbie.

On the other hand, if you're paying by the hour... But honestly, as a more experienced developer I don't NEED to be as interested as I did when I was a newbie. Back then I used to have to work much harder, because every task involved learning a lot of new stuff. You need the excitement to keep you motivated. Not to mention you are making less money. I build web UIs and honestly, no matter what the finer points of the design, most companies want a lot of the same things out of their UIs. Forms, tables, modals. You build these things 10 or 100 times, and it just becomes a thing you can do with or without motivation. The janitor doesn't need to be have a deep internal motivation to make sure the trashes are empty, and neither do I to implement a responsive table. The paycheck is enough to get me to come in and make sure that all the pixels show what they're supposed to show and the button clicks do what they're supposed to do.