Those of us just entering the profession quickly find that many aspects of our work would seem to require understanding and conventions for which we lack preparation. We find that the standards at our places of employment are only ever involved with deliverables production and the volume of projects, to the exclusion of professional values and integrity. This factor is mirrored in project process and especially in agency-client relations.
So we make do, and satisfaction suffers. We then build the habit of making do and taking what we can get, and soon we find it easy to equate getting projects (at whatever cost to our integrity) with attaining success. In this manner we craft a career of compromised integrity, which of course inevitably leads to ongoing dissatisfaction. It should not be so.
This is so, so terrible, because it is true.