Yeah, it's sad but this is the reality. Caring about your craft is for your passion projects / hobbiest endeavors. Once your beautiful software meets the reality of the real world and business it all falls apart— you can either take a mindfulness approach and just come to accept it or let it drive you mad.
The goal is to write not-bad code. You're not trying to do shoddy work on purpose but good enough is good enough.
I don't necessarily agree with this take.
Lots of development shops care about UX/DX. Many Indie games are crafted with love and often many are successful -- even releasing bug fixes and updates years after it entered the shop on steam. Many high level developers learned how to write good code quickly, not just for themselves, but for the people that came after them.
If presented with a good argument, most people will agree to logic. Unfortunately, many business decisions are made behind closed doors to avoid dissent -- or even any discussion of alternatives.
Isn't that true everywhere in life?
There's a reason way more people buy furniture from IKEA than some craftsman who loves woodworking.
People also don't generally pay the premium for craftsmanship in clothing, house construction, vehicles, food ....
They may pay for premium craftmenship in one of those options. This is very common.
This is true, but a software company that does not provide good software well eventually do worse than one that does.
There is no substitute for actually providing value at the end of the day.
I used to think that, or maybe just wished it were true, but then looking at Microsoft’s valuation I’m not so sure it is…
Windows works pretty well, regardless of how angry it makes OSS folks. Ditto for Office or really most products from MS...
It doesn't have to be this way, though. We as a society choose to accept this state of affairs. Should we?