I'm the same age and I'm an engineering manager. I never thought I'd be working for a big company and most of my career I hadn't but now I am. At least where I am I think the engineers have more or less equal contribution to killing creativity and sucking life out of your soul. There's a symbiosis there. I have to deal with engineers that over-complicate everything, make things drag forever, apply philosophies they don't really understand, argue about the dumbest things in code reviews etc. As was mentioned in one of the other comments, many people that are in software development today aren't there's because they like it or have aptitude (those things often go together), they're there because it seemed like a good career. There are still some great people though.

At the end of the day culture is created by the people. Big companies are the way they are because of a combination of people and the business. Management maybe has a somewhat bigger influence but it's really not fair to put the blame squarely on management. I've also seen big companies that were much better (mostly where I am now) and much worse. I've also experienced a pretty bad startup. A middle manager can have it worse because [they are] stuck in between- I often take care of a lot of crap for my team.

For my part as a manager I try to make things better where I can. I never stopped doing technical work. I have deep technical roots and a lot of startup experiences to draw on.

I've always lived frugally and have done well financially. I'm still working for the challenges and the money and maybe it's just inertia ;)