TL;DR: I lived this situation on a shitty firm. It's depressing. But "good" firms do exist, don't lose hope! I lived this situation : I got hired as a develope

TL;DR: I lived this situation on a shitty firm. It's depressing. But "good" firms do exist, don't lose hope! I lived this situation : I got hired as a developer and got involved into making the product better and improving our processes. But the firm was (and still is) utter shit. It was painful and I was unhappy. Some people there are still trying to do a good job and they have had several episodes of burn-out. Some other just lowered their standard and accept to get paid to poop some ugly code and apply useless processes (some might be happy, but most of them are dead inside). I just gave up on this nonsense and quit, and was lucky enough to find a much better place. My new firm (not that "new", it's been more than a year now) is not perfect and can definitely be improved... But motivation and commitment into improving things are actually welcome, and it works!