20+ years writing code have taught me a few things. The first and most important is that every code base, given enough time, will end up being difficult to maintain and full of things you hate. And you might have written some of those things yourself. And I think that's fine. Striving for perfect, clean code is impossible, because the understanding of what that means changes over time. Code needs to do its job and be reasonably easy to maintain. That's what I strive for these days. And if that is too boring for you, you'll need to find a new job or write open source software. A company that decides to pay you isn't usually looking for your ideas about which tool or paradigm you get excited about. They want you to make them more money than they pay you. You can bemoan that, but it will be as effective as complaining that water is wet. I actually enjoy solving problems and luckily as tech lead I still get to do that, because they pass the real hard problems on to me. That's enough for me to enjoy my job. Of course the money helps too.