I'm sure this is how things go for a lot of people, but I found it pretty defeatist. The current programmer/developer/whatever job market strongly favors employ

I'm sure this is how things go for a lot of people, but I found it pretty defeatist. The current programmer/developer/whatever job market strongly favors employees -- if you have solid technical chops, you probably have your pick of jobs all across the industry, and I don't think there's any reason why you should have to accept a "soul-crushingly boring" job where your value is so poorly appreciated that you have to resort to scheming to justify your continued employment, or where anybody gives a shit about job titles. Yuck. Work someplace else.