Most of us would rather be creating art than be beholden to crappy commercial interests. Most of us would rather be the one giving orders than taking them, or compromising our art to other people.

We programmers have been incredibly fortunate to be considered "golden boys" (and a few girls). We spend no more time mastering our craft than the poet or the painter, but we get paid a lot more to do it. We still don't make as much as the one who brings in the seed money and keeps most of the profits, but because reasons we haven't been relegated to the barely-tolerated and barely-paid status of the people who write documentation or make our products attractive, no matter how good they are at it.

We programmers have, I think, become more associated with those who get rich off the process -- the CEOs and CTOs and such -- than the ones doing what we think of as grunt work rather than creative work. We get to dream that our side projects are just one elevator pitch away from our own C suite.

I'm suggesting that you're on to something considerably bigger than a personal gripe. This is a very widespread thing, and maybe the alternative to being unhappy about the difference between our side projects and our day jobs is to help everybody reconsider what "day job" really means. There are a lot of people who would like to be more creative in their work -- including collaborating creatively -- and perhaps finding that people would actually enjoy (and pay for) the results of that.