Random Rant: So I recently got a web "development" job...but..

I dont know how many people have done this on here. But here we go.

So recently, In the past few months, i started working at a small web "development" (5 employees) but it's not what I thought it'd be. Pretty much, they reached out to me out of nowhere and hired me on the spot, as a "lead developer", and they pretty much made it seem as if I was going to be writing PHP|Javascript|HTML|CSS all day, so I was pretty excited, being a self-taught 19 year old.

The first few weeks, were pretty cool, right off the bat they handed me a project, which I had to develop an appointment system for a company that offered interperting services and a few other php based projects.

After that, it turned into a completly different job and I don't know what to do. Don't get me wrong, the people here are good-hearted people, extermely nice and treat me well but it isn't what I signed up for.

Turns out they don't really do any real "development" atleast from my point of view, their main goal is for people to buy into their website & seo "packages". When they speak to clients, they paint a whole different picture than what is offered, they promise a "custom" website and they also promise #1 ranking on the google search engine for their keywords within a month.

First of all the websites they offer arent custom, they use the same Joomla template, that looks like it it belongs in the year 2001, for every single customer, if we put every single clients website side by side, the only difference would be the text, and pictures/color scheme. Thats it. Their whole reasoning behind only using the same template is because it's "seo" friendly, and that using anything custom is bad for SEO. Which makes no sense. Second of all, #1 ranking in a month? Even tho I suppose it's possible, I don't think it should be promised. You have no idea how many people come in mad about "seo" results.

I do no real development, I pretty much sit there and take content the customer sends us and paste it in the wysiwyg editor in joomla. Wrap it in some html and pray that the joomla template doesn't clash with my css. Which more than often does, the template which uses some knock off version of bootstrap has so much unnecessary css and markup its hell, (Im serious, an image that has a border, padding, shadow, margin and a float property, is wrapped in 5 div's, one for each rule, even 5 years ago, I didn't write markup this bad -___-. ), anyways, so I spend hours tracking down something down, it's a big waste of time, espescially when I came to find out that they don't even care how they layout is presented, they just want as much text on the page as possible.

Ah, it just gets worse. Since their clients are mainly small-medium size businesses who target pretty much every city in the near by Counties, their SEO method is to create as many pages possible, with the same content, but just change the city name(which from what i know is bad SEO ). This means, over 140 pages need to be manually be created by me using the wysiwyg editor and joomla and copy and paste the same content over and over again for hours. Since when is this developing?

I pretty much did the same exact thing over and over again for a few weeks. but then a breakthrough came, when they gave me my own project again. They still wanted me to use the horrible joomla template, but atleast they didn't have any preplanned layout, and there was no need to make 140 pages of the same exact thing. So i quickly went to work and came out with what I think was beautiful website with a modern look to it, with popular effects like parallax scrolling, css3 transitions, etc, I even created my first joomla plugins, to handle some gallery features. I was so proud. As I worked through it, I would show them milestones, and they'd love it. So I thought it was all good and dandy, but right before the launch of the site, when I was just about done, and pretty much just replacing the temporary content with the customer provided content, they told me to stop working on it and that they'd finish replacing the content. So I was like, "yay, no more copying and pasting", but a few days later, when the website was marked of our checklist(which means it was launched on the clients server), i decided to take alook at my work again, to my suprise, they destroyed everything, they removed everything I had done, and just did their typical routine, and threw text everywhere, with a couple of pictures. I didn't mention anything about it, but it was really a low blow, I worked hard to make a modern website to break the 2001 mold, and they just pooped all over it.

And again, i returned to the same copy and pasting routine for a week or two but then last week again I was handed my own new project. This time, I knew not to go all out, but still I made sure to have a clean and tasteful layout with a modern touch to it. At first they weren't really happy about my design input BUT I had already sent the link to the client, and he had emailed back saying that he loved it, so that saved my work from getting popped on again atleast for now. Although today, I overheard them saying they were going to add a bunch of text, to fill in the "whitespace" (which will destroy the clean look of the website), even though, the client said it looks amazing the way it is.

I dont even know what to do anymore, The people are very nice and treat me very well, but it just isn't what I signed up for, but also I would feel bad if I quit, since I know they struggled to find anyone with qualified development skills (even tho ofcouse, they aren't used -_-).

If you made it this far into this post, what do you recommend I do/approach this situation? is there any remedy?

Everyday I pray someone comes in, wanting an amazing web application built from scratch, but I have a feeling they reject those customers on purpose, because they personally do not have the skills needed to interact at that level but idk xD.

Sorry for the long post, had to say it someone. x)

PS. Did I mention, I do my work, in what seems to be the Cupboard Under the Stairs, in which Harry Potter lives in, when staying at the Dursley's.