Find the Joy in Unsexy Tasks

I see many people get frustrated that work puts them on boring or unsexy tasks. They think that programming is only fun if you decide what you get to work on. I think this is problematic. One of the best skills I acquired over my career was finding the joy in any seemingly boring domain or task I was given.

My first job out of college was on a small team for a legal services company. They helped people or companies with statutory representation or filing legal documentation in the right jurisdiction. Sooooo sexy right? On the surface, the tasks sounded just as exciting.

• Submit XML electronic filings for the Secretary of States offices
• Work on software to fill out PDFs for paper legal filings
• Rebuild applications built in classic ASP and Delphi into their modern (for the time) counterparts

But if you dig deeper, each of these tasks contained a treasure trove of experience and learning that I still refer to this day

• Submit XML electronic filings for Secretary of State's offices
  • Learned about XML, SOAP, and just the basics of HTTP-based APIs. Sure SOAP is not really popular these days, but the fundamentals gave me a foundation and appreciation modern APIs
• Work on software to fill out PDFs for paper legal filings
  • Learned how to manage background tasks and generate PDF files for a web app
  • Learned how to build a robust and flexible forms validation system to handle different state requirements
• Rebuild applications built in classic ASP and Delphi into their modern (for the time) counterparts
  • Reading old legacy applications to uncover behavior and undocumented business logic is a skill you don't just get tinkering on your random greenfield side-project. This is a skill that is invaluable in the real world.
• Created and executed manual database deploy scripts
  • Sure a more automated process would have been ideal, but I had to learn how to think about deployments, order of operations for data integrity, and rollback strategies

There are many more examples, but the point should be clear. I would not have chosen to work on any of these, but the amount that I gained by doing them has made me the developer I am today. Being so entitled to think that you should only get to work on the high-value sexy greenfield application will limit you in the long run. So the next time you are handed that task that seems "beneath you" try to change your point of view and look for the joy in what you can learn from it.