I coded for fun before I ever coded for money. However, at this point I've been a professional software engineer for enough years that the interest in software that I once had has almost entirely drained out of me. I find professional software engineering to be very very different from, and much less fun than, coding passion projects. And at this point, the interest in coding passion projects has drained out of me as well. I just don't find coding to be that interesting any more. I feel like I've already spent more of my life coding than I should have, more than coding ever really deserved. I think that if I found a different way to make money, I could be perfectly happy going the rest of my life without ever looking at another piece of code.

I am considering trying to move to some kind of non-coding role in tech. Maybe some kind of management role.

you can do software engineering without the money just fine.

make an open source project without ai