[synotic]

It depends on who you're working for (how top-down or bottom-up the company is) and how autonomous you are. Doing things cheaply and quickly, even in a web startup is shortsighted. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money. Sometimes big, interesting projects take time (think IBM developing Watson). I'm not discounting agile methods — the things you choose to do should be done efficiently, but they shouldn't be done poorly.

Perhaps I don't disagree with your comment that "most" developers have to do things cheaply and quickly, but I think most anyone has ability to speak up in their environment and push for the changes they think are important. I've worked at a big, sprawling company and was still able to work against the grain and push back on requirements and things I didn't think made sense. I'm working at a company now where I can do the same things (this time with less pushback).

If you change your perspective from controlling your job or your company to controlling yourself and your career, then it makes it easier to pull back and make the decisions that make sense for you and the things you want to work on. Then the places you work at are just the vessels and opportunities to turn your ideas into reality. The onus is on you to determine your career — not your company's.