I've had a similar experience. So much hype about each new place I've joined only to find the same levels of corporate political crap. What kills me is the lack of care about the quality of the product. "Good enough" is never actually good enough for me and when you are the only one (or at least in an extreme minority) in the entire company that cares about that, it's incredibly demotivating.
I've recently joined a very early stage startup at a pretty high level. I'm in charge of an entire class of product (mobile native apps) and it's been the best experience of my career so far. It's stressful and tough but I'm 100% in charge so I can care as deeply as I want and it's up to me to make it work. Very rewarding vs the typical Corporate slag.
> the quality of the product. "Good enough" is never actually good enough for me
I hear you loud and clear. One way to get a higher standard of quality may be to switch industries. In aviation, where bugs can cost lives, there tends to be a higher standard. You may still find the bar of your co-workers isn't as high as yours, but it will definitely be higher than at a consumer-products or web-facing company. I know, I've interviewed at a few of those and turned down follow-up interviews and offers because they don't care enough about quality to do QA.
"Devs push to prod; rollback and page someone if it breaks" isn't acceptable when the customer isn't able to take 300 aircraft out of service every week to load your latest release.
I've recently joined a very early stage startup at a pretty high level. I'm in charge of an entire class of product (mobile native apps) and it's been the best experience of my career so far. It's stressful and tough but I'm 100% in charge so I can care as deeply as I want and it's up to me to make it work. Very rewarding vs the typical Corporate slag.