[krigi]

You're describing nearly every job I've ever had. Here's how I coped with various instances.

1. Left the job. 2. Got involved in other teams' projects. 3. Colluded with other employees to break off and form our own company. 4. Accepted it and collected the paychecks (that dwarfed the combined amount of what my parents made at their peak salaries).

You're not going to get what you want out of your job unless you ask for it. If it isn't feasible or possible for your workplace to accommodate you, then that leads you to finding it outside of work. Like mentioned in other comments - there's open source and charity organizations that might need something. If you don't have ideas of your own, you might want to find a business type person and help solve his problems. However, that will likely be quite similar to what you're doing now.

Consider doing something other than programming as well, or something where the programming is secondary. I, frankly, have lost a lot of interest in programming itself because I've been programming since I was 6 (>30 years) and I've learned over a dozen programming languages since then. It's lost its lustre for me. Changing the focus to the non-programming part helped.

The last thing to consider is getting involved in a university project. Those generally have enough difficult programs without the time crunch involved in industry.