A tip for those who still have the chance to change careers and want to do programming instead of whatever it is that done in vast majority of industry: switch to academia.

You won't be paid that much, your employment situation will usually be unstable and you'll have to do some boring bureaucracy like beg for funding and play politics, and will likely have/get to teach.

But you'll get to do more or less whateber you want, or at the very least get to decide how to do it. Most projects are greenfield and they work well enough when they work for your purposes. The programming is about the problems, not making yet another CRUD. What you do probably doesn't have much effect on anything beyound your small bubble of collagues, but at least it's usually not actively harmful to society in the way a lot of industry is. You can mostly say and think whatever you want without corporate gagging.

I made the switch almost 20 years ago and I'm very glad I did.