Am I learning, or am I just being used as the "cleanup" engineer?
I'm about a year into my software engineering career, and lately I'm feeling pretty frustrated.
A pattern has emerged where senior engineers build features however they want—sometimes in a single 1,500–2,000 line file—and then my task is to refactor everything. I have to break it into reusable components/modules, organize the folder structure, improve naming, and make the codebase maintainable.
The frustrating part is that if I miss even one thing, the PR gets held up until every detail is addressed.
I understand that refactoring and clean code are important skills, but it feels like I'm spending most of my time cleaning up other people's code instead of building features or solving interesting engineering problems. Sometimes it feels like I'm the designated "cleanup engineer."
Is this normal for someone with around one year of experience? Did anyone else go through this early in their career? Does this actually pay off in the long run, or is it a sign that I'm not being utilized well?
I'd really appreciate hearing from people who've been in a similar situation.