That's fine, but if I'm maximizing my pay for the effort spent, I'm just going to screw companies as hard as I can by charging them a ton of money while doing very little for them as a contractor. As much as you'd think the market would remove people like this from the industry, it isn't happening.
I could join up as a fulltime employee for 6 months only to find out they don't actually want to change anything (despite lying to my face in the interview) and increase value because they're a shitty non-profit, which means I won't get rewarded for putting ideas forth. WHERE IS MY RECOURSE FOR WASTING 6 MONTHS OF MY LIFE?!
a. Learning how to detect BS in interviews. Interviews are two-way streets.
b. Sit down and figure out what you really do want and how you ended up in this situation so it doesn't happen again.
c. 6 months over a career is nothing, and again, it wasn't wasted, its just the way you're looking at it.
d. Have you networked at all in these six months? If so, not wasted. If not, well that can only be on you not the company, right?
e. If you think non-profits are shitty, maybe a) they're not for you; b) you don't understand non-profits; and/or c) what were you doing there in the first place.
f. "screwing" a company is the same thing as looking out for your own needs (or in this case, the contractor's). There's good and bad contractors, of course.
Your observations may not necessarily be wrong, but to say it was a waste of time is short-sighted.
(edit: formatting)
I think a side-effect of devops is that more developers have to be good at more things, and less excellent at one. But, if I'm a hiring manager, there's places for both of those profiles in my team.