I am not sure if I can help with your question much, but I am sure I am in a very similar situation right now and I just learnt how to make myself feel better. No, I didn't "solve" it or "get out," but kind of not so bitter let it go.
Some context first. I have been to my current work place for a year. Our team have been maintaining a legacy system which keep upsetting me once in a while during the past year. It is a build system for many fundamental tools but the best it can give is its best effort. Sometimes a build just fails without any traceable reason, "clean everything before any builds" is the culture here. Other than reliability, the way this system utilizes machines is a mess. About 15 people across several software teams manually partition all the resources, and build/test/development can occur on any of those machines simultaneously. etc. Everyone seems to be either comfortable with it or ignorant to this issue.
So I write proposals a few times to address those problems during the past few months. It is a good thing, every body says that, but the reality is no any privileged one would ever start any practical change.
I started feeling severe Monday blue. I am always depressed about how ignorant the colleagues are or raged about every commit message. Every technical post, software engineering principle reminds me that the legacy system is just a piece of sxxt, so are those who ignore this fact. I just went out of my mind.
One day I found that I am near burnout, so I took a vacation back home and stay a few days with my parents, none of whom knows anything about software. However, it was still good to hear their wisdom about workplace things. At the time I knew that they are proud of me that I had the courage to address old problems, the rage inside me started to decrease. And now I can see the whole picture from a more neutral perspective.
Nobody wants to change, especially those who uses them in a daily basis. For any slight changes, call it enhancement/refactor/rewrite whatever, the man in charge will ask you to provide explanation from the draft to all details. The best case is that you have a PoC to demonstrate your idea, but again the scale of PoC may be challenged.
In conclusion, I tried to understand the rootedness in such legacy system, and at the same time tried to relieve myself from the pressure of "you must do something with this!" at the same time, but it seems pessimistic to me that the two goals are contradict to each other. I am still trying to promote my solution to the crazy mess, but less motivate and proactive than before. Since this is only a minor project in my whole career life, I don't have to care it so much that I can't feel anything other than anger to my colleagues. Now I feel better.
Some context first. I have been to my current work place for a year. Our team have been maintaining a legacy system which keep upsetting me once in a while during the past year. It is a build system for many fundamental tools but the best it can give is its best effort. Sometimes a build just fails without any traceable reason, "clean everything before any builds" is the culture here. Other than reliability, the way this system utilizes machines is a mess. About 15 people across several software teams manually partition all the resources, and build/test/development can occur on any of those machines simultaneously. etc. Everyone seems to be either comfortable with it or ignorant to this issue.
So I write proposals a few times to address those problems during the past few months. It is a good thing, every body says that, but the reality is no any privileged one would ever start any practical change.
I started feeling severe Monday blue. I am always depressed about how ignorant the colleagues are or raged about every commit message. Every technical post, software engineering principle reminds me that the legacy system is just a piece of sxxt, so are those who ignore this fact. I just went out of my mind.
One day I found that I am near burnout, so I took a vacation back home and stay a few days with my parents, none of whom knows anything about software. However, it was still good to hear their wisdom about workplace things. At the time I knew that they are proud of me that I had the courage to address old problems, the rage inside me started to decrease. And now I can see the whole picture from a more neutral perspective.
Nobody wants to change, especially those who uses them in a daily basis. For any slight changes, call it enhancement/refactor/rewrite whatever, the man in charge will ask you to provide explanation from the draft to all details. The best case is that you have a PoC to demonstrate your idea, but again the scale of PoC may be challenged.
In conclusion, I tried to understand the rootedness in such legacy system, and at the same time tried to relieve myself from the pressure of "you must do something with this!" at the same time, but it seems pessimistic to me that the two goals are contradict to each other. I am still trying to promote my solution to the crazy mess, but less motivate and proactive than before. Since this is only a minor project in my whole career life, I don't have to care it so much that I can't feel anything other than anger to my colleagues. Now I feel better.