The problem with most jobs (well, at least the kind of jobs those who frequent this site typically get) is not that they are bad. In fact most of them are quite comfy and well-paying. By the standards of previous epochs they would qualify as leisure.
The problem is that a job robs you of that tiny bit of fuel that you can use to change the world in the direction that is yours alone. I don't know the exact word for it, so let's call it agency. I would argue that it is in large part what makes you human and not an automaton. You didn't have that problem when you worked that warehouse job because you used it to save up for doing something you wanted. But for some senior engineer at the BigCo polishing the internals of an ad-serving backend in exchange for a hefty paycheck the problem is real.
It is especially tantalizing for us software developers because we are constantly bombarded with reminders about how much leverage and power we have. This makes the pain of wasting our agency on someone else's crappy vision even more acute.
The problem is that a job robs you of that tiny bit of fuel that you can use to change the world in the direction that is yours alone. I don't know the exact word for it, so let's call it agency. I would argue that it is in large part what makes you human and not an automaton. You didn't have that problem when you worked that warehouse job because you used it to save up for doing something you wanted. But for some senior engineer at the BigCo polishing the internals of an ad-serving backend in exchange for a hefty paycheck the problem is real.
It is especially tantalizing for us software developers because we are constantly bombarded with reminders about how much leverage and power we have. This makes the pain of wasting our agency on someone else's crappy vision even more acute.