From my own experience the best paying startups are ones that are privately funded or are run by overenthusiastic and charismatic CEOs who haven't really got a clue what's going on...

I very much applaud your decision to take the plunge and become a manager in order to try and make things better.

I fear it's a dreadful exercise, as you say, a bit like deciding to enter politics for the same reasons. I've known people try this and become either assimilated into the machine or find it so hard to make a difference that they just gave up.

For me, I'm happy to try and laugh about it - it's hard enough to get us software engineers to talk about anything most of the time but I've found that we've pretty much all shared at least some similar experiences in the modern day workplace.

Hopefully it makes us all feel that we're not alone.