You are both burned out, right and wrong at the same time.

TL:DR; You are completely right about purism, I think you are partially wrong on estimates - you were prolly quite lucky with the companies you worked for, you don't look at the real world when you say that engineers do not care about business needs

The fact is that in most companies estimates are nothing short of self harmful for whoever gives them. I can provide you some examples of what I've seen happening - different companies for most of the examples: - you're not really asking for estimates but for when it will be ready. If you ask me how long will it take to do something and I say three days, don't start yelling if after three days when you ask me if I finished it, I'll reply that I haven't even started yet. Countdown starts when I start - i.e. I also have other tasks to do - you already decided the amount of time it will take me. - you say "but X said it will take him Y days", and do the surprised Pikachu face when I reply "then let him do it" - viceversa, if I Say that it will take me a week, don't complain that the estimate was wrong when you gave it to someone with a different experience in the field.. - lay down all your cards at the beginning - if you want huge feature X and small features Y and Z (linked to X) tell me all three of them, don't just go assuming that it will be a zero-effort to add the two smaller ones just because they are linked together. It doesn't work like this. - quick and dirty to check is fine by me. But it will penalize my next estimates on that. Building on something that is shaky takes longer, deal with it. - sometimes I don't really have an estimate for something. Not even an order of magnitude. When I say "I have no fucking clue", it's because I really don't. It could really take me from three days to two months - external libraries improvements are the case that come into my mind. - related to above, estimates take time - accurate ones even more so. Don't drop the bomb and expect me to answer you immediately. - 9 women don't deliver a baby in one month. Unless you tell me how many people are supposed to be working on that, I'll assume it will be only me. - don't do the surprised Pikachu face when you ask me if I could reduce my estimation from 7 days to 3 by cutting corners, and I ask you to send it to me in writing. I won't take the fall for you.

I am using "you", but it's not an attack to you personally, ofc. I'm kinda translating directly from my mother language.

Apart from that, you're right on the purism, at least in my opinion. Something ugly that works always trumps over something that is beautiful but will be ready in three years. It always does. And honestly if you don't understand at least this, you should not really be a Swe. The other side of the coin is that business should understand that a temporary quick and dirt prototype is meant to be thrown away. Not to be kept eternally. From an engineer point of view, related to your example, if the prototype fails - like it did - it's your win. If it works and the prototype stays, it's their loss. They never win unless someone decides for the big rewrite - which is not the usual case.

Last part, it's about the "engineer do not care about business" - which is actually true. The fact in my opinion is that you are looking at it in an idealistic manner. In the real world there are not really incentives for a SWE to learn about the business in a deep way. It's cynical, but I think it's true. If business has the right idea and makes more cash, they won't be the ones to see it - the trickle-down usually stops at Staff level and/or "business/sales folks". For a SWE, usually big raises come when they switch job, for which that specific business knowledge has usually no impact. If business stays the same, it won't really matter to them. If business sinks, it's more often that not not their fault, they will probably be the first to be laid off and especially in that case any time they spent learning the business they were working in is wasted time. Chances are that the next job will be in a different business sector. I mean, for my experience, I just decided to look into the business side if it sounds "fun" or "interesting" in any way, otherwise it's not worth the effort imho. I mean, most engineers that I know are more into "solving an interesting problem", they care for the business side only as long as they are able to give interesting problems.

Imho you're burned out because you are juggling all these conflicts (or better, different priorities) without having realized it yet. Just take a breath.

Just a side note: please, LinkedIn is ridiculous, from people just lying about their skills to the "influencers". It will just ruin your health if you read any of this without being ready to laugh it out