Must of us software developers have little to no control of our work environment or assignments. What we do control is how we react to the work environment or assignments.
In my first management position, I had a really smart guy working for me. More impressive than his well-above average programming ability was how he'd find a way to turn the most boring programming assignment into something interesting. I learned from him to focus on my perspective on the task at hand and make things interesting/fun. Even if it's fixing a bug in some old COBOL program, there's a way to frame it as an interesting puzzle and make the best of it. More than any other single thing, this is why I still enjoy programming after 30+ years of it.
Control (Score:2)
In my first management position, I had a really smart guy working for me. More impressive than his well-above average programming ability was how he'd find a way to turn the most boring programming assignment into something interesting. I learned from him to focus on my perspective on the task at hand and make things interesting/fun. Even if it's fixing a bug in some old COBOL program, there's a way to frame it as an interesting puzzle and make the best of it. More than any other single thing, this is why I still enjoy programming after 30+ years of it.