I've worked in corporate software environments (though only two years as an employee, thank god), and I think you've expressed it well. It's noticeable that you

I've worked in corporate software environments (though only two years as an employee, thank god), and I think you've expressed it well. It's noticeable that your description is largely without bitterness, presumably because you've mostly evaded the experience. It's why I left. The alternatives were: start my own thing, or get out of the industry. Of course now I wonder why it took me so long. One reason is the time I spent wishfully thinking that the problem could be addressed by agile processes and "organizational change" (the latter being a genuine fiction as far as I can tell) before concluding that they were incapable of delivering even the minimum I needed not to go crazy.