I see a bit of mixed signal from your post: you like recreational programming, but you hate leetcoding (which are close to puzzles). You mention that the non-technical part of the job (product thinking?) doesn't seem interesting, but you consider content creation which is very much people-facing.
What is it that you like? Not a specific job or task, I mean what is it that you like doing? Solving problems for people, interacting with a team, solving puzzles, deep theoretical stuff?
The intersection of that and what's livable is what is going to work.
I think it’s clear: they just want a creative job.
I get this as I’m the same way. I grew up writing whatever code I wanted, so it seemed like a great match. A few years into my career, I realized I had become just a cog in the wheel and that I’d always just be a cog.
For me, as interesting as my career is, it saddens me that there are so many artist-SWEs like me, because the golden handcuffs can kill your dreams.
>I think it’s clear: they just want a creative job.
What is a creative job?
It's an honest question: depending of your definition, either pretty much everything qualifies, or no realistic path exists.
Musicians? If you make it a job you'll be at least chasing trends, at worst you'll have a marketing team dictating everything from lyrics to your brand of underwear.
Writers? for the majority their books won't ever be read, let alone pay the bills. Even those who make it will be subject to signing books for hours in events, appearing in interviews, and editors meddling to the point of not getting to choose the title.
Academia? have fun with grants and politics.
On the other hand, pretty much every job has a craft behind that can be mastered. Even someone laying bricks can try to improve their movement to be more efficient/healthy.
Finding the bright side is easier for some jobs than it is for others, but in general mindset is king.
> it saddens me that there are so many artist-SWEs like me, because the golden handcuffs can kill your dreams.
Sometimes dreams are just fantasies.
I love programming (and other puzzle-solving). I’d love it slightly more if I could just do it in whatever field or direction stuck my fancy, but I’ve made peace with the idea that we get paid that golden handcuff compensation in exchange for someone else choosing the puzzles we work on to be ones valuable and relevant to them.
Leet code feels like doing crosswords. There's a right answer to it, it's like a puzzle. If completing is a grind that's more of a mindset thing and how your approaching it.
It is a mindset thing insofar as my opinion is that there are more interesting things to practice with, sure. Grindy endeavors aren’t bad, just grindy. Given how much of the practical application side of that practice is handled by libs/pkgs @ runtime for a lot of product dev I’ve been involved with, it can seem a bit much. It isn’t so black and white of course, but this is just an off the cuff musing. I miss whiteboarding sessions, and I feel like the lc grind does a disservice to both sides of the hiring table in a lot of cases. Sure, “what’s a better alternative at scale” comes to mind, but I’ll digress lol
What is it that you like? Not a specific job or task, I mean what is it that you like doing? Solving problems for people, interacting with a team, solving puzzles, deep theoretical stuff?
The intersection of that and what's livable is what is going to work.