This is literally me. I can completely get the words of the person. Its exciting to work on side projects and contribute to open source projects, but really no one cares, but I have done it so far for personal pleasure.
If something makes me learn new things and go from knowing nothing to fixing a bug, the feeling of finally being able to go through that and see the green tick is so satisfying that the “who cares” question is just out of the equation. The feeling cannot be compared with anything.
I also feel a bit sluggish when solving LeetCode, I hate it for some reason. I have barely done any problems on leetcode, let alone grind it for weeks and months. I don’t quite understand the purpose of it. Just to get the job? To improve problem-solving skills? Maybe, but that’s just not how my brain likes to solve problems; my brain works when it sees the problem.