The wrong startup, for the wrong person, can be just as soul sucking as a large corporation. There's plenty of startups that I would never want to work for. This suggestion that corporations are inherently bad and startups are inherently good is overly simplified, and very naive. Google, Apple, and Facebook I'm sure all have employees working on their TPS reports as well. In fact, I'm sure they have security guards, lawyers, and janitors many of whom enjoy their jobs, and add value to the world, despite not being software developers.
I guess I just find the attitude that everyone should be a developer working 80 hours a week for a hot web 2.0 startup very troubling. I worry that some of us have some strange delusions of grandeur. Is the CEO of the next Instagram, working 80 hours a week, really living a better life than the guy next door? In the end, if you're living a life you enjoy, what differences does it make where you work?