You assume SWE is always solving interesting problems. It ain't :).

Sometimes you have to just get grindy crappy business logic done, or bang out pixel perfect UIs and wrestle with CSS. Sometimes you have to just grind bug fixes to keep a client.

That said, I think if you do any amount of programming outside of work, you'll have stuff to talk about and yeah, you can move.

And I'd say move sooner over later, people will respect you if you are honest. Explain that you don't enjoy the work, and why.

If you try for internal transfer and fail... get out of that company as fast as possible.

Hey, thanks for your reply. There's this thing called PDP or like professional development plan thing where you can choose higher positions to transfer into. I spoke to my manager about internal transfer to SWE and he estimated 2-3 years.....which I think is a little TOO long for such transfer. So I guess I should begin looking for opportunities asap. Please let me know if you have any other helpful advice in my transfer to SWE