It's pretty brutal, yeah. This past week I finished 3 times in the top 25 places of tournaments that had between 1500 and 2000 entries... I played about 11 hours in each tournament... and my reward? They were $5.50 tournaments with first prize around 2000 dollars or so... and for finishing in 22 or 29 place, I ended up cashing for like 15 or 20 dollars each time... I remember laughing afterwards, doing the math and realizing I earned about one dollar per hour for all my work.
It's almost enough to make me quit, but the truth is, I've never played poker for the money, I play for the love of the game... the only reason I want to win money is so I can play at the higher levels and keep improving my game against better competition.
Basically, even in a 2000 player tournament, if you don't make the Final Table, you're not going to make much money at all, and yeah it def sucks. It always feels like a waste of time. Thankfully, I love playing poker so that feeling is gone by the next day, and I do it all over again (the definition of insanity LOL).