I'd like to say something that will make me zero friends.

Being a good programmer is being able to do the boring work. Every time. I have my own company (two man outfit) and I partly agree with the above posters that you will do more interesting stuff at smaller companies, but it doesn't change the math. 90% of everything is boring crap. But it needs to be done.

A good company will spread the interesting work around, a place I worked recently had a rule that the same person couldn't do new dev (whole cloth projects) twice in a row. And they made sure there were enough new dev projects in the pipeline everyone got one occasionally (that was a larger shop, about 50 employees w/ 10 engineers).

Great programmers have done something before, so they can do it well when asked to at this job and for this particular problem space. It isn't exciting, but they will also do it just because it is their job. period.

I get to do stuff I find interesting frequently but I'm OK with the fact it won't be most or even much of what I do. If you can find a job that involves more interesting things than what you are doing currently, go for it. But there will always be the boring stuff. Starting open source projects or doing other personal stuff is a good way to have fun, but it is called a hobby because no one is willing to pay you for it (conversely, this is why they call a job "work").

-jackdied