While I sympathize with your specific situation, I can't help but suspect that, in the general case, there's something of a selection bias when it comes to playfulness and autonomy. What I mean is, people who are dedicated to maintaining their playfulness will tend to opt out of systems that don't allow it.
Anecdotally speaking, a lot of the creative and playful people I know seem to spend their careers moving, incrementally of course, from less autonomy to more autonomy. I see these moves happen when people leave a job, accept a new job, start a business, switch majors, transfer universities, or apply to specific grad program.
My point is that it could have been something essential to Feynman's character that led him toward the amount of autonomy he's famous for having had.
your mentioning 'autonomy' triggered off something in my buzzword laden head. Dan Pink came up with the autonomy/mastery/purpose triad in his book....
Cal Newport ( corrupted callings ( http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/04/09/corrupted-callings-the...) ) talks about how you need to GET that Autonomy for yourself through 'following your calling' and levaraging your 'career capital' rightly. hope this helps
Anecdotally speaking, a lot of the creative and playful people I know seem to spend their careers moving, incrementally of course, from less autonomy to more autonomy. I see these moves happen when people leave a job, accept a new job, start a business, switch majors, transfer universities, or apply to specific grad program.
My point is that it could have been something essential to Feynman's character that led him toward the amount of autonomy he's famous for having had.