No, most comments say to find fulfillment through personal projects/hobbies.
Work is work; it doesn't necessarily have to be the most satisfying or fulfilling experience ever. That's always going to be the case if you're working for someone else. Earning a boatload of money (and saving it) to retire early isn't anything to scoff at.
This also assumes one can find a more fulfilling job elsewhere (with ideal compensation). Which is just that, an assumption. If, and only if, such a job were lined up, then it might be time to move on.
We spend a LOT of time at work. It's ridiculous not to seek fulfillment at work as well as elsewhere.
Edit: I think maybe I didn't communicate well. I just mean that being fulfilled at work can be _very_ significant because work is such a huge part of our lives whether we like it or not. And so not _seeking_ fulfillment in work can be a huge blind spot.
I didn't mean to imply it should be prioritized above all else, or that it's shameful not to have the luxury to achieve this to a high degree, as the OP presumably does.
The Reality that most people live in is that we need money to pay the rent, like right about now. This limits the opportunities available to us because we simply cannot wait to find a fulfilling and justly compensated job.
I simply will not work for low(er) income just to satisfy my need for fulfillment (at work). You know what's better than that? Financial security. Retiring Early. Owning my own house instead of renting.
I would rather get paid a lot of money and not really work on very interesting things, if that meant I could retire a lot earlier and then do whatever I wanted for the rest of my life.
When work ends for the day, I work on my personal & open source projects, or engage in other intellectually stimulating activities like learning a language, etc.
I think the only exception at this point would be me taking slightly lower pay if it meant living and working comfortably abroad, because I want to live abroad for an extended amount of time, personally, so that tradeoff would be fine for me. In all likeliness that's going to be exactly what I do after I own my own house (at 26yo), and work under my own consulting business.
Security. Because you don’t plan to stay abroad forever and your house will still be there for you when you come back, whether permanently or on holiday.
Very few people have that luxury. The career path for your average software dev in Silicon Valley does not have a lot of interesting work involved -- it's a bunch of middleware stuff like parsing data, CRUD operations and updating documentation. It's the 21st century version of being an auto mechanic -- super interesting at first, but there's a definite ceiling on the knowledge.
There is only so much interesting work to go around, and you're usually not going to be doing it. You can seek fulfillment at work, but you also have to be prepared not to find it. Seeking fulfillment elsewhere is the secret to not burning out.
Work is work; it doesn't necessarily have to be the most satisfying or fulfilling experience ever. That's always going to be the case if you're working for someone else. Earning a boatload of money (and saving it) to retire early isn't anything to scoff at.
This also assumes one can find a more fulfilling job elsewhere (with ideal compensation). Which is just that, an assumption. If, and only if, such a job were lined up, then it might be time to move on.