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In my experience the bigger, richer, and higher status the company or role, the less actual work you're allowed to do. The book 'The Innovators Dilema' spends some time theorizing at why this might be.

On the other hand if you're willing to work at an unimpressive, low status startup you can often do a lot of interesting things. Startups also tend to attract nerds who don't really care for status or impressing other people. They're more focused on the engineering problem at hand.

This isn't always the case of course, but playing the odds it's more likely.

Startup work is riskier and won't impress people the same way but you get to do stuff. Not pretend work that sounds good or is meant to promote people, work that you think up over beers at 7pm and then go code the next day at 8am (or 10pm that night depending on the startup).

They have challenges of their own, but for a certain kind of personality they're much more palatable than large companies.

Keep in mind if the startup is successful it will eventually grow into something that attracts status seekers and shifts to derisking rather than weekly hail marys. But the fun years can last a good while before that happens.