I've also thought about this a lot. My last years of work life have been quite boring as well. On the other hand I realize that, as you write in your first post, are scarce and precious.

A few years ago I applied for a really interesting jobs within Telematics - one of my favorite areas. So I called them, got the CTO on the phone and he had almost no time for me. Then I wrote a mail with my formal application to them. It was appealing and they replied with some coding riddles. I guess I did well enough and was one of 2 or 3 people to get invited. Of course before the in-person interview I studied some Algorithms & Data Structures book. At the same time I did Scala programming although it wasn't expected to know that but people worked with it.

Anyway, during the interview they made me sweat for at least 3 hours. Every now and then also reminding me how good the other people working there are - the one guy having worked 8 years at a company writing DBMS in London. So yeah, after leaving the communication was difficult but the CTO said the people said they liked me and they would hire me despite my shortcomings - I would have to unlearn stuff. The offer was really bad, in fact even the most senior people got below average salary.

At the end I started working at a company that worked on a moonshoot project involving a CAD program in the browser. Even some mathematician who worked in Japan on Robotics was there. Salary was good enough but the people were borderline insane. I quit after 3 months and landed a below average paid job, but with a lot of nice people. I don't regret that. Work was mostly boring but the environment was nice.

Anyways, not living in the Bay Area, I guess things are they different again.

For me, the most rewarding work is the volunteering I do. I coach various youth sports. I have no pressure to win so I can focus on letting the kids enjoy themselves, have positive interactions, and learn a little about the sports. Seeing them gain confidence and passionately work toward something is a major reward for me.

I still enjoy trying to match a user's expectations with the software I write. But, it's balanced by other aspects like coaching and being in a family.

> Living in a city, there's no such thing as "local community" anymore. Not even neighbours.

Sure there is. I live in a condo with 20 other units, and it makes a great small neighborhood.

How do you make it work? In the experience of every condo dweller I know personally, people know their neighbours mostly to the extent they bother being involved in their HOA meetings; otherwise, everyone walks their separate paths, only greeting (and maybe briefly chatting with) the neighbours as they meet them on the stairway.

It helps that it's shaped more like townhouses than an apartment building. We have a large interior carpark/garden where the kids play, which creates a lot of incidental contact and I think the kids are a huge factor in making a neighborhood feel, it creates an easy shared experience and proximity means you can easily help people out with eg shared babysitting. There's also a few people who make a dedicated effort to encourage community, like trick or treating, and it's a place where half the residents have been there over ten years. I joined the HOA in my first year which has definitely helped me get to know others.