I still love technology, technical challenges and clever hacking. But 95% of real world work is not that. 95% of work is fairly boring plumbing or translating o

I still love technology, technical challenges and clever hacking. But 95% of real world work is not that. 95% of work is fairly boring plumbing or translating of requirements into something that will make money for the company. And that's not some terrible thing. Like you said, a job is something you do for money. If it weren't, it would be a hobby. Having people be passionate about the work they do is a great way to lower the wages and working conditions. Look at gamedev, or other sectors people are passionate about. Because so many people want to build games, they are considered expendable/replaceable and are treated poorly, both in terms of wages, working hours, and other labour conditions. The same thing applies to FAANG companies to some extent - they just "burn up" young talent by motivating them to spend as much time crunching in the office as possible.