11–20 of 50 posts
Maybe you haven't been reading http://thedailywtf.com . Most programming jobs are as you have experienced. Maybe 1% of 1% work for startups on exciting projects. The rest just do maintenance on Java EE or worse COBOL.
Become a gardener.
Also, work and learn at home. That's your time and you can learn and do whatever you want.
Keep in mind that there is no job where everything is perfect, so collect all negative things you have at the current position and try to change them. If that's not working then leave :)
What managers love is the example and real POC. So if you think that something is wrong or old, create a POC, make a demo. That way you can get some time and resources to do something new and interesting. Don't think someone will give you such project just like that :)
How you feel right now it's completely normal and expected because you are young and you want to learn and gain knowledge. I have changed 4 companies because I was searching for the job where everyone is writing clean code and where best practices, code review, and learning are on the high level. You can forget about that because managers don't care how your code looks like, or if you are using best practices to achi…
To add to what you say, I also believe that while we easily start hating our jobs most of the times, we often fail to realize we were never excelling at them.
When I come to realize that I am currently not enjoying my current role, I think of only two possibilities. I either put in my time and efforts to make myself better at what I am doing or simply do something better that would make me enjoy my job.
P.S. grass is always greener on the other side.
Also we have to log hours meticulously (down to 15mins). Even after a year that is a pain in the ass and actively makes me dislike my job.
Frontend dev here, I feel the same about my place of work. we are an agency with ~150 clients, all working on the same opensource system (that we extend). Day to day you keep doing the same things, install module X, style item Y, but it feels all mundane. Part of that is that the most we do is support, which is usually 2-4 hour tasks. Also we have to log hours meticulously (down to 15mins). Even after a year that is…
I think you're starting to think like them.
Become a gardener.
Try to work for a startup. There you might encounter more challenges, both in diversity of work you will have to do (in smaller startups), and in the technology and sophistication of the programming required. Another alternative would be to switch to being smartphone developper, eventually to an independent smartphone developper, where you'll be able to find more interesting and technically-challenging projects.
I've been out of work ever since and love it.
I have a space alien.
God says... disfigurements polyphony's theologian's limpest ounce players saboteur's Bushnell's weakling's we'll patriarchies regenerates figurine's navigation's sequencer briefness Cerf's marchionesses Ashkhabad's fix creationism's establishing elicited countersank lumberman's infantry homerooms puritan stooge's transsexuals monsieur foresight's
How would you like to be on a failed project at Google. Miserable.