It's not all about the job
Forget getting a job for a second. (Come on, you can do it.) Why are you doing web development to begin with?
People ask me about better ways to do something all the time. I also sometimes give unsolicited advice on the topic. And every time it's "But companies don't want that." And that's what I tell them. Why are you doing web development to begin with?
If you don't like the craft, if new ideas don't excite you (even if they're bad), then maybe you don't want to ask how to do something better. Maybe you should hang out with your managers more and network with people who can get you the job.
There's two sides to the story.
On the one hand, there's the craft. There are things you do that have a certain effect, and then you go into the whole story of how much effort it takes to get there and how much effort the computer has to put in to make that effect a reality. If you are asking for a better way to do something, it's about the craft, not getting a job. You are asking someone who has been perfecting the craft for decades, and you're getting advice about the craft.
On the other hand, there's a job. Jobs aren't necessarily about the craft. Once you're past some baseline technical knowledge (which, when it comes to web development, isn't that much), you don't really need to grow much further as far the craft goes. Jobs are about the craft, too, but employers aren't usually looking for the ultimate craftsmanship — though, why not? — but someone who can fit in with the team. What fitting in entails depends a lot on the founding members, and it rarely changes unless they change. The requirements are usually close to the image of the average developer (currently that appears to be a university graduate who likes to memorize lots of complex concepts so they can recite then when asked but will rarely use them in practice because they believe anything beyond using off-the-shelf solutions is 'working too hard').
What am I getting at here? The point is that the "better" way to do something is not necessarily going to land you a job. You may be 100x more effective than someone else, but still not get that job because your methods are so wildly different from that other person.
Insights lead to change. If you learn that someone can actually do it 100x more efficiently, you are faced with a simple binary choice: you will either change your methods to get there, or you won't. Organizations don't normally like change.
Can you simply neglect the craft and focus on the other attributes that make you employable? You know, like conforming to the lowest common denominator approaches (a.k.a. "best practices"), learning how to pass interviews the same way you pass exams at school — no real-life experience required, maintaining a desirable demeanor regardless of what you really believe, and so on. The so-called soft skills. Apparently it works for a lot of people. If you believe hard work is the raison d'être of a company resource — what a hideous phrase! — then maybe you can just relax and enjoy the ride. And I say hard work, because if your craft is not very good, you are going to do things the hard way most of the time, even if you don't realize it — yet.
I myself am too lazy for that...
I'm allergic to hard work. Have always been. I tend to get feelings that something can either be made easier or will become easy if I practice. Even when I'm faced with a situation where I'm expected to conform with some team practices and tools that will make me work 10x more than I need to in order to get something done, I will figure out ways to reduce that to 2~6x. I'm very particular about that. I highly recommend it.
Next time before you ask someone for a "better" way to do something, try to think about what your priorities are and what kind of answers you really want to hear.
