[coopaq]

Sounds like you were working for somebody else rather than youself. Was it a consulting startup? Did the customer force you to use some technology that was a burden rather than a boon? I work at big corp and really the only thing that causes burnout for me is being force fed a technology from on high.

[geon]

We worked on our own product, but the first customer to use it, and the one to finance the development had some horrible technology.

First of all, we focus on interface, ux, usabillity and design, so we had planned to build a client iPad app for a server backend, developed by a third party. That third party turned out to be completely incompetent, and we had to ditch them half way through to build the backend on ourselves (me, that is) too.

We still had to sync our backend with the clients horrible hack of a CRM. Using a backwards, badly documented SOAP webservice that was only partially implemented.

[coopaq]

I feel your pain. It's seems some of the most popular work available is based on some impossible existing code base that some manager wants to make an "interface" for... yet the existing engineers could not even do it. So the manager thinks they can call in a specialist to save the day. Maybe the day can be saved, but if the APIs/Services are unfinished undocumented inconsistent crap then what... We all need a strong radar detector for this kind of work.