This is THE big difference between S/W dev and IT. For 20 years I worked in the former, and for the past 10 in the latter. No question about it: IT is hell. Theirs is a never-ending mission to reduce the cost of moving data and being "compliant" with often-meaningless ever-excessive corporate standards (and forever meaningless MBA/CIO fads and groupthink).
Worst, in most businesses, IT doesn't have a respected mission. Ii provides an infrastructural service (a cost center) that other C-suiters dis as no more important than HVAC and sewer. IT appears on their radar in only two ways: 1) when something breaks and info clogs up or stops moving, and 2) when the budget is revisited and interest in IT cuts are reinvigorated.
Since nobody else in the corp. respects IT's mission, senior mgt. compels the CIO to adopt meaningless surrogate goals because IT's actual mission isn't sexy enough. So for the next six months IT adopts "Platforms" or trains half the staff in Six Sigma, or outsources, or insources, or promotes of whatever other CIO groupthink initiative is in vogue at the moment.
So yes, work somewhere software is valued, unlike IT.