>Run like hell?
>You have to face reality. You have a boss who basically tells you what you need to do. If you can't handle the boss-to-subordinate and subordinate-to-boss relationship, you can't function in a company.

I was the one who invented the saying that programming is like prostitution, in that we do what we love to do, and we charge for it.

Which doesn't go the other way around: as much as I want to be paid for doing what I love to do, I don't feel obliged to love what I'm paid to do.

So far, I have managed to avoid all the traps (I hope) that can befall a programmer: I haven't helped anyone cheat on accounting (actually, my code made it very clean for financial inspectors to see what came from where - saved the butt of a few of small entrepreneurs who had Sloba's goons aimed at them, couldn't find anything wrong); I didn't have to write code for anything unethical (no telemarketing, no lottery, no MLM, no usury)... the worst I got into, IMO, was the diamond trade, which is IMO a scam, but then the details were published 20 years ago and nothing happened ;).

In each of the teams I was in, the teams were built from within, by the sheer fact of being together on the same code, same product, same problems, in the same boat. There would be an occasional pep talk here and there ("OK, here we go: I'm pepping now", one CEO said), but we all knew what the guy was doing, and we were required only to listen; applause in the end was optional. No dramatic performance whatsoever, no brotherhood rites, no fake rock concert lemmeseeeyerhaaaands, no secret handshake.

I guess I was lucky, smart, or both. I didn't have to do anything that would go too low (in either humiliation, or in bad taste). That may have left me on a high horse, just like my lack of religion made me very unready to kneel or bow. From there, the unholy opinion that nobody should be forced to kneel or bow is not far.