Are other software engineering jobs more fun?

I switched careers into software development almost a decade ago. I have found that

a) Yes. Much of the software development you will do in the plain vanilla business world is not very analytical, interesting, or exciting. Many companies are very slow moving and your ability to influence that is going to be nil if you're just writing their software.

b) I have much less talent and passion than I thought I did when I started. :)

Don't let that deter you. Software development as a job is still better (compensation, hours, opportunity to solve problems on a daily basis, ability to find jobs) than virtually anything else out there.

Consider taking the initiative to try and improve the processes and/or tools that are causing you frustration. I realize that in some organizations this will be prevented by too much bureaucracy, but in many (even big orgs) your actions will improve your life and those of your co-workers and you'll find such work rewarding (even if it's not necessarily coding). Remember, nobody set out to create procedures just to slow people down or to sap the fun out of your work. Unfortunately, many end up doing that or being perceived that way, but they were created for a very valid reason. See if you can streamline rather than avoid or be frustrated by them.

The other comment I have, unrelated to the above, is that your repeated reference to "talent" is somewhat of a red flag to me. There is nothing wrong with being confident in your skills, but often the idea of "talent" can be conflated with ideas of "if only I didn't have all these procedures, I could write code SO FAST", the consequences of which are generally the reason those procedures exist today. Personally, there is a very small percentage of developers that I have met over my career that I would call "talented" (< 5%) and they would certainly never say it about themselves (and I don't consider myself among them). Talent was in how they thought about solving problems (that maximized quality and minimized work) rather than their ability to "bang out" a solution really fast. The ones that openly refer to themselves as "talented" are often personalities that need to be managed.

   > Sadly, I think the bureaucracy here will be tough 
   > to beat. I've already seen a few people try to 
   > tackle bureaucratic issues and fail.

Never take a salary cut to work at a startup. Are you an angel investor? No.

There probably are better jobs. But unless you live in a major city, it will probably be hard to find one. And even still, it's not exactly easy to get a job at a good place to work. Everyone wants that job!

I bounced around 4 different companies after changing careers into software development before I found my ideal match; don't be afraid to get back out there and find something more satisfying.

I regret to inform you that this is a normal situation. In economy, you have to do what's useful for other people and not neccessarily what's fun.

Of course there are jobs at the intersection of those sets, but also there is much competition for them. It's harder to find them and you might have to accept lower pay for them.

You also mention "corporate world": larger teams impose their tax on participants. "The Mythical Man-Month" book (by Frederick Brooks) says that for a team of size n you have n(n−1)/2 possible communication paths between participants, which means that the communication and coordination overhead rises much faster than the team size. This accounts for half of your time being taken by "process".

So small companies migth be more interesting, but also riskier (because small companies are tipically start-ups which haven't yet confirmed the validity of their business model). Of course there are exceptions, but on average this also means you get paid less.

One case study for fun job is id Software at the beginning - the guys who developed Doom, the first significant 1st person shooter game. In early 1990ties it was the most installed software on computers by one Microsoft study (googling for details left as an exercise for the reader). The game was technological breaktrough, something new, it had massive impact and was financially successful. And you bet they had a lot of fun doing it.

Edit: corrected the group intercommunication formula

Sounds normal. You probably spend 40% of your time browsing the web right? I've worked at a half dozen different companies, from small startups to large mega corps. The only thing that makes it tolerable is changing jobs every 2-3 years to keep things fresh.

If you want to work on interesting, challenging stuff, work for a small company* that depends on software for their success. The last company I worked for had 3 employees - all engineers.

* Not necessarily a startup, just a small company.