What you're saying is true, but it's a tautology. It doesn't matter what technology you use, your job will always be "just as bad". As a developer it's your job to push the limits of what you can accomplish until it starts to hurt a little. That will always be true of the web: we'll push what browser capabilities we try to harness all the way to the point where compatibility work really starts to burn.

But if you look at things in absolute terms, what you're saying is crazy. I can build, in a week, something that is better in every way than Gmail was when it was originally released, that works on a larger proportion of devices. That's progress

Your subjective experience might be that you still work in the weeds but that's because you're insanely more productive for the same effort than you were 8 years ago.