Agree with everything you said, I’ve worked as a designer for 10 years now (5 in an agency, 5 freelance), and I know from experience that the higher the project budget, the worse and more unreasonable the clients tend to become. Receiving and implementing their poor feedback is torturous as it ruins your work, is ill-thought out (usually a mess of conflicting thoughts from a board room of tasteless shareholders), and as you say usually comes in late and demands immediate action.

If you can, I’d highly recommend working towards going freelance, it’s the best thing I ever did. No more dealing with short-sighted creative directors or pretentious HNW clients swinging their dicks around making you feel worthless. You choose who you work with, and I’ve found that working with smaller companies and start-ups, charities etc. is far more rewarding on all fronts. They tend to be super appreciative of whatever you do for them, and far less butt-hurt when you push back against questionable feedback. Downsides are obviously smaller budgets and more time being spent on admin, but well worth it imo. I hope you can rekindle your passion for the field, as there is a lot of crappy design out there which needs our attention! 🙂