My experiences from startups have been underwhelming for reasons similar to yours. I haven't been part of an autocratic ego-centric management, but I still felt

My experiences from startups have been underwhelming for reasons similar to yours. I haven't been part of an autocratic ego-centric management, but I still felt like I didn't deliver any real impact. I was just told to fix bugs, close tickets, etc. Same cog in a machine feel but without the benefit of working closely with people to mentor you. In the last startup I was in, even though we're in a team of only 3 engineers, implementing design changes was an uphill battle. The senior engineer lives in Eastern Europe so communication time was difficult, and he had a very impractical way of doing things (preferred his own hand-made JavaScript framework over third parties, no modules, no integrated testing). These things lead to making myself a harder sell for companies that follow less unorthodox software development practices. Yeah, they can often be more freeform, but also by giving you the illusion that you can flip things around, or be a big fish in a small pond. Being that big fish is not good if the pond itself stinks.