Does Anyone Find Joy in Programming
&gt;I envy musicians, fiction writers, at least their work gives people joy, and maybe gives them joy as well.<p>Ask yourself this - what qualities do you see in this work that you admire?  Are they things like autonomy, creativity?  Which of those are you missing from your work?  Do you work with&#x2F;for people you like and respect?<p>Imagine this scenario.<p>You work as a writer for a huge company called International Book Manufacturing.  An exec has just decided the company wants to launch 9 book series on romantic vampire-pandas and they have got funding.  This is what happens next.<p>1). A group of execs and strategy researchers sit down and decide the major themes of these books
2). A group of senior managers narrow down which book get which themes
3). A group of book managers are assigned to each book.  They write the major plot requirements for each book
4). A group of principal book architects write out the major plot points
5). A group of book architects define what goes into each chapter and do the outline for each chapter
6). A group of principal book engineers further refine the outlines and define the paragraphs
7). The writers finally get all of this and are assigned paragraphs.  You only get to interact with your team, which is people who are writing the same chapter.  You have a style guide for what you can and can&#x27;t do.
8). Halfway through the project, book scientists uncover vampire-pandas are on the way out and ware-koala bears are the new hot things.  Major parts of the books are rescoped.
9). When your team is 80% done with your chapter, an editor realizes an important portion of your chapter was not done properly but the person who worked on that has left the company.  They scramble to get a new person, don&#x27;t train them, and have them fix that portion in a completely half-cooked way, which causes major problems when book 4 is started.
8). The company realizes that a competitor is going to publish a 10 book series and the first one is coming out 3 months before yours gets to market.  The scope is changed to get your book out the door sooner.<p>Would you enjoy being a writer in this situation? Do any of the qualities you imagine a happy writer&#x2F;musician has in their work exist in this scenario?   Sadly, I imagine there are people who churn out stuff like this (e.g. Mills and Boon Romance Novels, Top 40 Songs) because they have to.