For you, what's professional happiness?

Working on a project
... with a stack I enjoy
... that has a meaningful positive impact
... that has a clear direction and sensible management
... using the tools I prefer
... with decent monetary compensation
... with recognition of my accomplishments
... that doesn't detract from my personal life
... that constantly challenges me

• Enjoyable commute to work (or work from home with a good setup)
• Predictable day where I get to work on projects that interest me
• Building things which generally benefit the people that use them and society at large. Don't have to save the world, but the end-goal should be positive.

When I feel I'm changing the world better with my code, that is awesome.
When I feel the code I wrote is totally meaningless to the world, that is awful.

Feeling like I'm making a positive impact not only in the "world" but also feeling that I'm a valuable asset to the team/company.

Being listened to and my ideas being used or considered make me extra happy.

Having a good enough salary that I can live my life nicely and still afford certain luxuries.

Doing things that interest me. I for one not only love front end development and design, I also enjoy making code more maintainable, documenting and fixing bugs in the back-end. I'm comfortable on both sides.

I'm a social butterfly and I love hanging out and having fun, so if my teammates also like having fun, it's a plus! A good workplace environment is always nice.

I hate long rides so, a work close to my home would be good.

Probably a place where there's a visible professional growth line for me, like in a game.

Small things.. :)

As a junior developer

-working with experienced colleagues who don't mind sharing their wisdom and don't mind me asking questions all the time
-working in a field/on a product I actually care about (makes things helluva lot easier)
-working with technologies I'm interested in
-having reasonable demands from the management but at the same time the work should be challenging
-being able to spend some time during work hours on learning new skills/technologies
-no stupid dress code
-having positive people in the team who enjoy what they do as much as me

Teamwork and being able to channel our collective energy and skills to solve meaningful problems in a reasonable time.

Nothing brings me down quicker than peoples effort being wasted.

We need to be putting a dent in the universe.

This is actually a very thought-provoking question.

Putting social aspects aside, I'd say the freedom to make choices in how I and my team approach a problem gives me great joy. Also, the problems should be challenging so that I am kept on the edge!

Tackling the technical problems in seconds instead of hours 😁