[dferr]

OP, my personal recommendation is to run for the hills. if you have the money, quit now and do a thorough job search. I recently took that bold step and I'm glad i did.

I can't recommend this enough. find a job you really do have the best of both worlds, and stop settling for advantage/disadvantage positions.

I worked with an awesome team, but the company was sketchy, and something tells me you're in the same industry i was... E-commerce. The team was awesome, and i still have real friends there because of it. but the management and business ethics were terrible, not to mention that non-technical folks were making technical decisions that overrode us. the hard part of leaving is that i felt trapped, that if i left, i'd be unprepared for the positions i wanted. but thankfully i was wrong.

i decided that i'd really take the time to interview companies as much, if not more than they interviewed me. asking questions i had come up with that would spot companies like this. I even cut a few interviews short because of these questions, but it helped me clarify what i wanted, and where i would be happy.

to measure out my results:

  * was already well paid, new job paid 40%-60% more(range for discretion)
  * new company actually cares about code quality, testing etc. 
  * mgmt leaves tech decisions to us.
  * better, more flexible hours.
  * smarter people than myself, things to learn, and people to learn from.(education wasn't big at my last position)
  * a bit more stressful, in a good way. I feel like i have more responsibility, and that i truly own what i do.
  * path for career growth. i can see where my next steps lead me

yes some of these are subjective, but thats the point. these are the things i wanted. you might have different needs, but i'm confident that this approach will make you happier, more in love with your career, and less jaded like i was.

Best of luck OP.

[SeaDude]

"Run for the hills"... unless they pay well.

I'm not sure where you all play, but I play in big Corp, with my own ethics and make a strong impact. You don't have to tow the line, sale ially if you kick ass.

If you do indeed have values / ethics that STAND OUT (as opposed to just expressed on forums / on your sleeve) and you're a solid PRODUCER, nothing else matters. Go get it man!

My experience (15 yrz in big Corp operations and now IT) is that your ethics / values "get out" on their own and make a deep impact; IF you're skilled at what you do.

[mistermann]

To others reading this thread (especially people new to industry), the line "You don't have to tow the line, sale ially (especially) if you kick ass", while it seems completely reasonable (and you would think literally impossible to be wrong, is very often wrong.

Politics, and quite often outright fraud (disguised as something else, it's not at all difficult to obfuscate decisions when it comes to software), are very common in all businesses. The idea that you will win because you are correct is not necessarily true. It's probably a pretty good strategy at small startups, it could very well be career suicide at larger firms.

[dmoy]

What does the phrase "sale ially" mean?

[Gigablah]

I'm guessing autocorrect for "especially", with the "c" fat-fingered to a space.

[dmoy]

Ah gotcha thanks, I didn't make that leap.

[cbr]

typo for especially?

[gtirloni]

I've had a similar experience in big companies. While you're learning and you're challenged technically, all is good. Once you master most of it and start asking the deep questions about how exactly you're helping the world (and sometimes more importantly, the means for that), that's when trouble starts.

E.g. "kicking ass" improving infrastructure performance and having fun, then your boss asks you to delay (or never implement) certain improvements because it will be hard to justify the body shop headcount next month.

[jwatte]

"Toe the line"