Who cares about code?

I'm the kind of code monkey who reads what I think are top blogs like coding horror, worse than failure, reddit (OK, it's not really a blog), and codebetter. I've read many of the programming classics like Refactoring, Pragmatic Programmer, and Mythical Man Month. As I find time, I'm going through SICP.
IOW, I strive for improvement in my "craft" (trite though that word may be).

But, other than at my first job, I haven't discovered anyone else who cares a lick about software good practice. Even if such "practices" are debatable, I used to expect that just about everybody endeavored to follow some. In interviews I've sat through, almost all the questions I've been asked have been nearly inane. I remember one interview a long time ago where one person focused on my ability to call windows API functions. Huh? I was so naive to think that they should ask me questions about my design practices or some other relevant topic.
One shop recently interviewed my and didn't ask anything about my practice, have me do any exercises, ask for a code sample; nothing. I was amazed.

I think the problem is that I glean info from the "upper echelons" of development while being employed at the bottom of the heap. I don't think I'm going to find many star coding shops posting for jobs on amazon or careerbuilder. It's not that I think I'm a star, but I'd at least like to work somewhere where such things are valued.

Another factor is that the code monkeys in these upper echelons aren't writing business logic for BloatedCorp. The shops where I've been employed during the last 4 years are building very narrow business specific systems, not crafting some innovative new system that businesses far and wide will use.

The work I'm doing now can hardly be called development. The architecture of the system is fixed, and there's no way it can (or even would be allowed to) be changed. I add new widgets (each doing pretty much the same thing); that's it. There's no ancillary technology (I just use my language's IDE); nothing at all other than scripting the rules for the new widget. It's not even a job a programmer should be doing - a business analyst should. If the system needs a change in the way it does something, I'm not the one to do it (for reasons outside my control).

IMO, this is a massive waste of my potential. But that's why I'm code wannabe. That's why I write these missives to you, diary...