I just finished reading @nateberkopec's latest newsletter and something he said struck me: "Consciously or not, most developers see the systems they work on as extensions of themselves, which means that they want that system to be clean, organized, and performant."
I realized that this was very true for me earlier in my career, but has changed dramatically in probably the last 10 years. Early on, every web app I built was an extension of myself, my philosophy, my aesthetic sensibility, and the current representation of my skill.
That had some positive effects. It helped me take deep responsibility for what I was building, it pushed me to improve myself and build things as well as I possibly could. But it also had some negative effects. It made me more controlling, and honestly harder to work with.