The Brain Science podcast from Changelog has an episode about perfectionism and how it can lead to procrastination, by the fear of rejection or failure.

That's the rub with job as well, management simply can't follow their own return-to-office policy uniformly without bleeding talent, which is clearly going to lead to a lot of disgruntled coworkers. It's frustrating too because we have both productive and unproductive employees advocating for remote.

When software is both your hobby and your profession, you have to think carefully about what you mix and how. The developer also goes onto state that what he did is nothing new and he decides what repl.it's IP is on their behalf. Is this hinting that he wrote his new project in a similar way, but he believes it to be nothing special?

Obviously the CEO's response was deplorable, but also probably a lesson to a new developer about mixing work and hobby.

I think one thing I'm learning is where to spend my effort. Its definitely a balance, but I'm putting more time/passion into my personal projects/learning, whereas before I saw more opportunities for overlap with my passion and work. When your work doesn't recognize that effort or actively fights against those efforts, it's draining and frustrating.

I've also been thinking about dedicating some serious time to learning. I keep thinking about the idea of taking a month or two off from work. Just treat myself to my own mini-semester of homeschool. I'm somewhat confident I could learn enough to land a better job, but more importantly, one I enjoy more.