TL;DR
We are working on an app for a crypto social currency for the city of Barcelona, it was started by another company and they stopped working on it and handle it down to us.
When we first started we made tech-dept calculation and it gave us something like 3.6yrs for a 1 yr project... crazy... We started working on it little by little, refactoring here and there... it's been 2+ years since we started. But as usual, we were faced with new features and bug fixes that took us of course from refactoring, so tech-dept has not been reduced that much...
Many times they've also asked for a feature they need ASAP, we have done it at the cost of letting another project aside and/or working more hours... in the end, they didn't even want to dispatch it... this has happened 3-4 times already...
There is also the point that I'm the only developer working on the app, and communication is not very good lately so I feel alone quite a bit, and feel like I'm a machine that receives requests and dispatches code... which I'm not, I'm human and have feelings.
I have also been fixing loads of bugs introduced because of bad design by their part, and make me feel like it was my fault... I can handle this somewhat, because I know it was not my fault. But when it's a recurring thing, it starts to add up and can be really frustrating and depressing.
Lately, I've been struggling to find motivation and willingness to work on the project, mainly because the bad quality of the codebase and the little interest on the team's side to improve the app or at least acknowledge that It's rubbish, and I'm doing more work than needed. It's also giving me a lot of anxiety thinking about working on the project, as I know how much work and headaches I will have whilst working on it... and knowing that I'm alone does not help at all...
I would love to know how you guys and girls handle this kind of stuff, what would you do in my situation?
- Should I embrace it and just f**k it?
- Should I try and be more serious about the importance of improving the codebase (not just only to improve the app but for my own sanity) and talk with the team even more?
Any advice or help is really appreciated. And if you read up to here, I must thank you for taking the time to try and help :)