I keep saying it. Building software in tech sucks. The process, the people who complicate everything, all the unnecessary features that bloat the code, spending all your day reviewing pull requests, etc. But building software in general is fun. For me it's also not so much about the software but about the business. When the business motivation is clear and I believe in it, then I'm motivated to build software. And when I say business motivation it can even mean me wanting to learn something.
I'm in agreement with you that it's about the business and having the passion and motivation to solve the problems of that business. When I look back on my software career and think about the projects where I didn't have an interest in solving that particular problem, I would always revert back to just learning the technology for the sake of learning. For me, just learning and not applying was never as fulfilling as doing both.
