This is the main reason I refuse to entertain going perm in the tech sector. The amount of superfluous infrastructure and unquestioned use of SPA's is just an overwhelming time sink. I would honestly rather work with some 2-bit company's legacy PHP than this mountain of crap.
For what it's worth, once you are proficient in the full end-to-end, navigating it is pretty easy, IMHO.
It just takes years and lots of room to do basically nothing, and if something meaningfully shifts, you need a while to get back up to speed.
I'm not saying it's efficient, or that you should dive in, but I did want to throw out there that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. People using React.js aren't flailing about in the dark the whole time.
Food for thought: the tech sector is much larger than the trendy dumpster fire of web development. You don't have to work at some startup on some website. There is still lots of real programming to be done.
