Not all large companies feed you kool aid, force you to attend pointless meetings or use shitty tools. And re: tools, this really has little to do with the company size, and sometimes you have to take shortcuts and use inelegant solutions to satisfy the customer - which actually happens a lot in startups. It is true that working for a large company can hurt your creativity, but on the other hand there are classes of problems that can really only be solved at a big co. If you enjoy working on these problems you might not have much of a choice.