I am in a consulting role and I often make upgrades to existing systems or integrate with existing systems. Sometimes, that means working on a 20 year old system and all the cruft that comes along with it.

I can feel the pain of some of those points. It can be frustrating when you strongly believe that replacing or fixing a part of a system would be beneficial, yet it is not done for political reasons. Personally, I can take comfort in the fact that I've brought the issue to their attention.

As consultant for Fortune 500, I have experienced all those reasons.

Pay, freedom to remote work and days off whenever I feel like is what makes me mostly happy.

I guess it does depend on how you find work. I'm not part of an agency or corporation.

The only things from that list that I routinely have to deal with are #3 and #7. This is usually when taking over old code bases.

But...sometimes I don't really mind that. Refactoring is relaxing to me, but it depends on what mood I'm in.

I also rarely see #1 as an issue. Yeah sure, it really sucks when you spend hours being stuck on 1 problem, but I would rather deal with that than being bored out of my skull.