Reading all the replies to this thread scares the hell out of me..about can the same happen to me after 23 years more in field of programming :( .. its only been 1.5 years since I've started my career as a Software Engineer, but I'm sad to say I'm not happy how things happen at the job. I'm very much interested in software design and architecture and I was very proud about my skills back in the days at university. Hoping to further sharpen my skills I've secured a job offer until now , just to find out that I've no longer been able to get the self satisfaction by designing a software system and see it running as expected...its because at the office all I have to do is to use a third party framework and features to get the work done.. I even asked with the superiors.. and they told me that the project needs to be completed quickly hence they have to use the framework...damn its very boring to use some code while we can design a better one which is more suited for our case.I feel that because of all the competition to secure the clients its very hard to evolve as a very good software engineering person. I think I'm in need of a life changing decision :):)