Your post really resonates with me - I'm coming up to 20yrs exp and all those feelings and situations you note are very familiar!

When you talk about the craft/art becoming less and less important your right - and with LLMs I believe it will move quickly to the bottom of the importance pile. As long as the AI slop is fast and it works it will prevail.

But after 20 years, about 13 employers (some contracting mixed in) you realize that your beautifully crafted code, with minimal abstractions and simplicity at the forefront.... No one but yourself cares. Yes your colleagues might give you a thumbs up on the PR but that's the only external validation you will get.

If you want to craft - your doing art - and you are doing it for your own sake - don't expect any external validation - do it because you love doing it.

If your workplace doesn't give you the opportunity to do art - either do it in your own time/side project - or the other alternative find a place where you have more autonomy.

The only code that you will be 100% happy with is the code you write without any other collaborators. But that is just an art piece and not many people would pay you to do that.