> It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. To add to this, the "industry" is very big and fundamentally quite diverse in

> It’s not the “programming industry” that OP hates, it’s the “corporate world”. To add to this, the "industry" is very big and fundamentally quite diverse in character. But right now we're on the tail end of a big surge in growth, and those surges tend to introruce a lot of uniformity in their wake. Processes and practices of the orgs are taken as some part of the secret to their success and are adopted by competitors and newcomers, and after a while everybody-ish doing work adjacent to the booming sectors within the industry are approaching it similarly and procedurally. The focus is on outmaneuvering competing businesses for a slice of the growiing pie, and matters of concern of the craft itself or long-term engineering vision are generally deprioritized. This is not a permanent condition or a universal one. All along, there were still people and orgs and departments doing things differently, but they did become harder to spot amidst all the boom chasers. And as the boom tapers or bursts, with competition having less at stake, even the homogenized orgs and departments start having the headroom to take a second look at their processes, procedures, and priorities and again start to diversify. It's reasonable to get discouraged if you've only ever seen the kind of orgs you can't stomach anymore, but a little patience can find you with opportunities you're more comfortable with. Some dedicated pavement pounding and deep digging for the orgs that never hopped on the bandwagon can make it happen to. Different kinds of orgs are out there now, and more will come to look different again in some coming years.