There are exceptions. I spent 15 years as a developer at Bloomberg, which is a fairly big company, working on the software behind various financial trading plaf

There are exceptions. I spent 15 years as a developer at Bloomberg, which is a fairly big company, working on the software behind various financial trading plaforms. That could be intense, demanding, stressful, sometimes satisfying, sometimes frustrating, but never dull. We were organised as small teams, each responsible for some particular product or service. So you would know a lot about what your team was doing, and could easily approach any of them. Often you would need to coordinate with some other group, which I found a bit harder, but that's mainly because of my rather unsociable personality. There were company processes of course, sometimes annoying but mostly reasonable. High performance was expected and rewarded. That can be brutal if, for whatever reason, you fall behind, but if you can handle the pressure it's a great gig.