I'm doing this right now. Hired on as a "programmer" I haven't written code in the entire time i've been in my current position. I'm doing the crap work, as are all of my coworkers who were also hired as "programmers" in the hopes that in a year or two they'll be able to jump into what they thought they were signing up for.
So now I have a decision, jump ship and hurt my "future" but find a place that gives me real work and get some experience or stick around in my "gamble" and maybe eventually get back to what I was doing as an INTERN in 2 or 3 years.
I'm jumping. not because I hate the company, but because I won't be anywhere further in my career or skillset in those 2 years.
Exactly why I'm leaving my company after ~3 years. There's absolutely no movement but lateral with a laughable pay raise, more responsibility in tasks that are unrelated to my skills and greater micromanaging.
While I've learned a lot here, most of the time I've been stagnating and it's depressing and infuriating.
I'm using "game" as a synonym for "gamble", not "engaging, interactive experience".
When you let your boss assign you crap work to support his career goals while you don't learn anything, you're essentially gambling. The idea is that if you let him use your career in the way that a teenager uses a Kleenex, for about 3 years, his sense of indebtedness will inspire him to start giving you real work and this sudden turn to political favor compensate for your wasted time.
What actually happens is that the real work always goes to people with higher-quality work experience than what you got. You're not eligible for the good stuff, because you wasted years of your life on the garbage out of a misguided sense of loyalty (or perhaps financial desperation).
From the inside, find a better way to separate those who can make an actual contribution to those who just do what they're told and need to be told what they should do?
People who try to work directly for the company by solving important problems they weren't told to solve get fired for breaking the #1 Rule of Corporate Survival: Never Outshine Your Master: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMy8Tf-zCag. (Ok, that's actually one of the 48 "laws of power" and I don't agree with the whole body of work, but that one is 100% true.)