I have a soul-crushing job and I don't know what to do

I love programming and I enjoy solving good problems. Even though I am aware that there is some level of grunt work associated with each job but this one is just killing me.

Most of my job deals with adding CRUD functionality and bug fixes here and there. People don't seem to be tiny bit interested in doing things better. Our front-end developer chooses to re-implement everything from modals, alert boxes, to validation in form of horrendously ugly code because he believes his code will be more understandable to 'him'. The pay is not great and there nothing exciting associated with this job. In fact, out of 8 hours, I barely write code for 2 hours.

I only took this job in order to buy some time and create some interesting things but this job barely leaves me any time to do so. When I started looking for job, I didn't get good response from HN hiring / freelancing threads (maybe because I don't have a good portfolio).

I feel I should know modern frameworks like Rails and Angular to have a better appeal but it would take months before I get proficient in them and I have never been good at learning new frameworks for just the purpose of learning. I have no idea what I should do?

I had string of crappy jobs to get finally a good one. I worked at a dead end e-commerce company that's now defunct that provided its own in-house platform to sell to customers for e-commerce sites. It was miserable, everyone could see the company was on life-support, including the owners. The practices we used like editing code on live sites/servers was insanity. I forced myself to start using Git, making me the only one using version control and sneaking in best practices to hone in skills. I took what I could from the job to benefit me (taking on a project to make a mobile version of the platform). I hated the job as the work environment was toxic and it was affecting me outside of work. Even to this day, I have the occasional bad dream of being forced to go back to work for that company but having some sort of exit plan, even vague as mine helped enormously.

Picking a project and assigning it a tech stack is the best way I've found. Simply doing tutorials for the sake of tutorials takes superhuman dedication. My motivation grew also in parallel with the work conditions spiraling downward.

Long story short, I scored a job oodles better than the horrid job and make significantly more, and have happy coworkers and bosses that care. Plus, I've picked up a lot of skills here which I'd never been able to at my crappy job.

> I only took this job in order to buy some time and create some interesting things but this job barely leaves me any time to do so.

If your interest is in creating "interesting things," you should focus on the ways you can scratch this itch. If you go into your next job looking to "buy some time" you probably won't be any happier than you are now.

> I feel I should know modern frameworks like Rails and Angular to have a better appeal...

Software development is software development.

A lot of jobs, even at prominent/"hot" companies, primarily involve CRUD applications and mundane development tasks ("grunt work"). Proficiency in Rails or Angular might help you land a new job, but it's worth contemplating the very real possibility that the nature of the work at these companies won't be any more engaging to you just because your employer uses a framework du jour.

You are not alone. I am in a similar situation. Best advice for learning new platforms is to come up with something you want to build and then learn the new framework by implementing the idea using the desired framework.

My plan to get out of my rut is to build my own self-sustaining startup that I am more passionate about.

The main problem is exhaustion. The queer thing about jobs out here is that in name "flexible timings" there is complete lack of schedule. Everyone comes around 11AM and stay till 7-7:30. I reach home by 8 and I am completely spent. Weekends are better but I don't feel I am progressing enough to have a good job.