[fieryeagle]

I have been through very similar situations like yours during my early day jobs. It's that fire that we always had, fresh out of colleges and into the workforce, the drive to do good things, build cool stuff. Makes you very susceptible to be manipulated into doing more for free. If you think they pay well (just in certain pockets of the world anyway), the ROI from all that you do are multiples of what they gave you.

Here's the thing - your management know exactly what frustrated you and also know that it's the most efficient cost-cutting move, and it simply doesn't overlap with their interests to do something about it.