Working as a Dev for a while now, I tell new people not to bother with it. There is never any job satisfaction as people in charge never understand the basics.

Instead of learning to write efficient code, figure out how to solve real business problems, work towards a maintainable flexible product to quickly deliver value on changing requirements, write automated tests to improve quality, maintainability and prevent live issues - basically do anything a good Dev strives for - you will just constantly end up working for people with no interest beyond the next couple days, on a shit code base that no one can understand, with people that don't want to learn anything about software design and just check boxes off.

Apart from pay this must be the worst career possible in a technical field.

Or maybe it’s time to find a place where you can find job satisfaction as a dev? Those places do exist, rare as they may be.

@100110111 I can't find any. I think because I'm in a middle ground where I understand OOP and FP, I understand clean code and good design, but I'm not an algorithm wizz or an infrastructure/ cloud specialist. I'm too good for the small company with no idea what they're doing eg no version control, but not good enough for a proper tech company that really has high standards.

@Crost then you sound like me. But I’ve found such a place. I know I’m lucky, but it is not impossible. Do not despair!

Sometimes the dev team’s attitude can change eveything.

I’ve worked as consultant in 2 very different teams under the same PM. The PM was very spontaneous and after a stakeholder meeting she crested new tickets and argued they were urgent for the business, top prio, and code quality could wait.
Team1 always did what the PM said and established that it was OK.
Team2 had a strong dev culture and a lead who usually said ”That’s impossible - it’ll take weeks to quality control - and our sprint is locked for 2 weeks. So that’ll be a month”.
Usually those tickets were forgotten as time went on.
When I talked to the PO after a few months she said ”Oh Team2 work on very sensitive stuff so we need to carefully verify each change. Team1, on the other hand, work very differently - they have no risks so they are super flexible and fast movinh”

Both teams did the same thing.
One just instilled a culture of not budging.