Great article, this echoes a lot of my frustrations working in the software world. It doesn't help that I've experienced being on a well-managed software team working on interesting problems--it kinda spoiled me for all those other jobs... :)
Anybody have any advice for escaping this? I want the freedom to work on interesting things in my own way with a minimum of the politics. Ideally a PM would be someone who pushes back on all this micromanagement crap and does everything they can to make the developers' jobs easier. It seems I'm not self-motivated enough to do freelance work or start a start-up, so what other options are there?
It sounds like you were at a company you enjoyed before—are they still hiring? :P
If not, maybe you can do another job search and try to select for companies that manage their projects how you'd prefer. Try asking team members what the process is like and how they feel about it. Often times those Qs are more illuminating than ones about the software stack.
Anybody have any advice for escaping this? I want the freedom to work on interesting things in my own way with a minimum of the politics. Ideally a PM would be someone who pushes back on all this micromanagement crap and does everything they can to make the developers' jobs easier. It seems I'm not self-motivated enough to do freelance work or start a start-up, so what other options are there?