I think you answered your own question in a way. The baseball analogy is you keep making the team (acing interviews) but it sounds like you are trying out for

I think you answered your own question in a way. The baseball analogy is you keep making the team (acing interviews) but it sounds like you are trying out for teams below your league. Like a major league player trying out for AA ball team. OR Maybe you have to realize that being a software engineer really doesn't have much to do with optimizing algorithms, trade-offs on design paradigms, how to perfectly architect an application or having perfect code. Unless you are at a brand new startup working on v1.0 you are maintaining software. When a company has a tech stack and an application built, they have already made most of the decisions. You comment about office politics, communication and risk management. These are facets of working for anyone in any job where there is a decent sized office. Spend more time interviewing the company, boss and potential coworkers next time. Come to the realization that being a software engineer isn't just about writing code.