I think what happened to OP is that he's getting tossed the shit work and nothing interesting, so he's doing someone else's IE support.
If you're building your own web app, you decide if, and when, to support IE. If it's bringing in $10k/month and you can double that, it's worth the hours of unpleasantness to get the additional money. If it's something you're doing for fun that isn't going to make money, you don't do the IE hacks. But there's no point in doing someone else's IE support, unless you can get a promotion or a bonus out of it.
The problem is that while he sucks at politics (that's why he's doing someone else's shit work) he doesn't know he sucks-- the first of four stages, unknowing incompetence-- so he thinks that the industry is just chock-full of shit work, because that's all he's able to get (and he hasn't figured out that you don't really "get assigned" the best work; you just do it). He needs to learn how to fight for himself; that's his real problem. Otherwise, he'll end up pulling a Walter White over-correction when it's decades too late.
If you're building your own web app, you decide if, and when, to support IE. If it's bringing in $10k/month and you can double that, it's worth the hours of unpleasantness to get the additional money. If it's something you're doing for fun that isn't going to make money, you don't do the IE hacks. But there's no point in doing someone else's IE support, unless you can get a promotion or a bonus out of it.
The problem is that while he sucks at politics (that's why he's doing someone else's shit work) he doesn't know he sucks-- the first of four stages, unknowing incompetence-- so he thinks that the industry is just chock-full of shit work, because that's all he's able to get (and he hasn't figured out that you don't really "get assigned" the best work; you just do it). He needs to learn how to fight for himself; that's his real problem. Otherwise, he'll end up pulling a Walter White over-correction when it's decades too late.