> So what I really struggle with is motivation, because it can be so disheartening to not be listened to, or to work hard on an implementation only to have the

> So what I really struggle with is motivation, because it can be so disheartening to not be listened to, or to work hard on an implementation only to have the elegance of its abstractions muddied beyond recognition by developers who don't take the time to understand them. This post hit really close to home for me. It's especially depressing to be caught between these "pearls before swine" moments and Impostor Syndrome and for a while this made it very difficult for me to work up the courage to go to job interviews. I am currently working somewhere that I genuinely love, as one of two senior engineers on a team of 7. I think I love it so much because I work with people who care about the quality of their work and respect the experience I bring to the table. They've been around long enough to see the cost of making the same mistakes I made 5 years ago, and have outgrown the "just ship it" mentality so many startups are born with and rewarded for. When you're trying to build a 100-year company, you value good engineering. Most software jobs in California are at startups that are not trying to build a 100-year company, more like 100-week companies. In fact, most venture-funded startups are trying to have as short a lifespan as possible, because they exist to generate short-term returns through big-money exits instead of creating reliable revenue streams. This often actively disincentivizes high-quality engineering, and I think is a big reason why it can be so depressing to work with startups.