I'm not sure where you all play, but I play in big Corp, with my own ethics and make a strong impact. You don't have to tow the line, sale ially if you kick ass.
If you do indeed have values / ethics that STAND OUT (as opposed to just expressed on forums / on your sleeve) and you're a solid PRODUCER, nothing else matters. Go get it man!
My experience (15 yrz in big Corp operations and now IT) is that your ethics / values "get out" on their own and make a deep impact; IF you're skilled at what you do.
Politics, and quite often outright fraud (disguised as something else, it's not at all difficult to obfuscate decisions when it comes to software), are very common in all businesses. The idea that you will win because you are correct is not necessarily true. It's probably a pretty good strategy at small startups, it could very well be career suicide at larger firms.
E.g. "kicking ass" improving infrastructure performance and having fun, then your boss asks you to delay (or never implement) certain improvements because it will be hard to justify the body shop headcount next month.
I can't recommend this enough. find a job you really do have the best of both worlds, and stop settling for advantage/disadvantage positions.
I worked with an awesome team, but the company was sketchy, and something tells me you're in the same industry i was... E-commerce. The team was awesome, and i still have real friends there because of it. but the management and business ethics were terrible, not to mention that non-technical folks were making technical decisions that overrode us. the hard part of leaving is that i felt trapped, that if i left, i'd be unprepared for the positions i wanted. but thankfully i was wrong.
i decided that i'd really take the time to interview companies as much, if not more than they interviewed me. asking questions i had come up with that would spot companies like this. I even cut a few interviews short because of these questions, but it helped me clarify what i wanted, and where i would be happy.
to measure out my results:
yes some of these are subjective, but thats the point. these are the things i wanted. you might have different needs, but i'm confident that this approach will make you happier, more in love with your career, and less jaded like i was.Best of luck OP.