It feels like you answered your own questions and are also to bothered by what sloperators and assorted clout chasers think. Coding, especially "deep work", is your passion that you'll still do once you exit the rat race, vibe coding is the source of your intellectual understimulation.

To me, that solution would be simple... cut out the slop, make stuff that you'll be remembered for, that you and maybe some like-minded folks collaborate on. Who cares what some rando vibeclown thinks how long something takes? You did something you might be proud of (i. e. you didn't waste time on trivialities like so many others) and had fun along the way.

But then again my advice comes from a different corner. I don't do vibecoding. Never have, never will. I also count myself lucky that I never had to as all my professional creative endeavours happen(ed) in a freelance capacity, thereby circumventing the corporate slopmire. And I'll intend to keep it that way for control, time, and my mental health are much more important to me. I also enjoy the privilege that I don't have to live in the United States, or a country with a similar, or even worse, setup...

As for different industries... that depends on a lot factors.

For work, you probably have to dance to someone else's tune.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46543516

presented a reasonable approach for using AI coding tools but still staying engaged with the code.

I am wary of hanging over the reigns entirely to AI, not just on a one-off project basis, but long-term. I don't think it's wise to rely so heavily on proprietary cloud-based applications as software development tools. Keeping one's hand on the wheel enough -- maybe like as that article describes -- should hopefully leave one still able to take over control entirely if needed.

Of course, who's to say what your employer might demand? It sounds like some people are insistent upon producing code at maximum possible speed, such that if you are still even reviewing code, much less writing some of it by hand, you are wasting time. I don't care for or agree with that notion, but it's not my place to tell someone else what to do.

It's kind of hard these days, because if you look at the world of software, corporations have enterprise systems that don't really spark any excitement for the people working on them, video games are worse than what they used to be, specifically AAA titles (indie games are cool, but they don't bring me as much excitement as AAA titles), there's like a million Android and iOS apps, most of which just aren't as... amazing as you'd want them to be.

If you really think about it, it just really comes down to the money. See, the United States is $38 trillion in debt, and as a result, I think a lot of people are struggling. If the U.S. wasn't $38 trillion in debt, I think a lot of people would have a lot more fun with software, in a way that... there would be something to create.

So, what I'm saying is, if there's a way to create software that revives society, and eases the struggle with money, that would be the thing to create.

I've felt the same, so I went low-level. Logic gates, assembly, reversing, etc. It's a whole other world. I'm not quite sure how good LLMs are in this area though. Perhaps they're really good and I'm wasting my time (again). But it's fun; it felt like learning how to program for the first time again.

I’m 51 now, during the first 15 years of my career, I got off of work and taught fitness classes as more of a hobby and commitment device than for the money and about once per month, my friends and I did charity races for fun. Of course we hung out at each others place, went to clubs, ate out etc.

I traveled 3-4x a year. Now on the other end with grown (step)kids, my wife and I travel a lot (nothing exotic and I know the credit card tricks).

You make good money in BigTech - enjoy it. While I know it’s not possible now because all of them have RTO mandates, my wife and I spent the second year I was in BigTech (after Covid) traveling around the country and I was still able to save a lot and pay off debt.