Everybody wants passionate developers, then they stick a product owner in your face and strips you of self-control...

Product Owners can only tell you when.
Business can only tell you who, what, and why.
Development is the only ones who can tell how.

@bkwilliams correct.

Product Owner is "what" and "when". Never ever "how".

If you have a PO who is trying to tell you "how" then he/she is not doing their job.

HOWEVER...

If what you mean is that the PO is telling you you need to build a user authentication system and an integration with stripe (for example), but you think it's a better idea to write an algorithm that personalises content based on behaviour (for example) then it's you that's the ass.

The PO represents business value and if they are asking for X and Y there will be a reason for that. No matter how much you want to build Z, there's a reason it's not being asked for right now.

I learned to swallow this pill many years ago when a director at a company I worked for said to me "I hear what you're saying, but if you want to be in control of everything you build and how you work then you need to start your own company"

I could have taken that the wrong way, but being pragmatic about it I totally agreed with him.

If you work in an organisation that's paying you to do a job, then do the job. Always feel free to have open discussion and suggest new things etc, but ultimately do the job asked of you. And if you want to be in charge of your own destiny, start your own company.

@SSDD my spit between Product Owner and Business is based on the engagement of business with principles of DDD. If that is a weak link then the PO will have more control, if it is a strong link the PO will control timing but not feature/outcome requests.