&gt; I&#x27;m going to take a wild guess and say you don&#x27;t really care that much about the purpose of your software. You&#x27;re not a game developer who&#x27;s been an avid games since age 4, or a silicon valley entrepreneur who truly believes their web app is going to change the world. You&#x27;ve identified a niche that&#x27;s liable to make some money, and are diligently plugging away at an implementation.<p>Spot on. I walked into this career by accident, the money was good and I stayed. No, I don&#x27;t know what I actually want to do - something I&#x27;ve never known :)<p>&gt; You&#x27;re in trouble if software craftsmanship is your only source of motivation.<p>Spot on again. Pride in what I do is my only motivation at this point. I don&#x27;t get to see happy users, find out how I&#x27;ve improved lives, get user feedback and <i>make things better</i> for someone.<p>&gt; Now that you&#x27;re in this project, it may be impossible to quit.<p>It was impossible to turn down, as they&#x27;re a good client and provide somewhat interesting work (always unusual tasks). Otherwise I wouldn&#x27;t have touched it.<p>&gt; I&#x27;ve never understood how developers can be happy writing CRUD apps or pushing ads. You gotta search for meaning. Even if you take a pay cut, it&#x27;s worth it to find work that you care about.<p>CRUD is the most soul-destroying code to write as doing it with good craftsmanship is impossible (there I said it). Concerns overlap between the front and backend. I do share your sentiment, but pay cuts are hard (I suspect I undercharge at the moment, making them harder still).<p>Thanks for commenting!