You're conflating two things. One is the principle that engineering needs are only really important as far as they serve some business need. As a developer, I d

You're conflating two things. One is the principle that engineering needs are only really important as far as they serve some business need. As a developer, I don't love this, because I'd like to be able to work on whatever I found useful, but it's true. The second thing is people ignoring opportunities to make engineering changes that would be beneficial for both engineering and business reasons. They do this because "it's not how it's done" or "it's impossible" or "we don't have time for that". And this is a problem that affects both engineers and leadership. Some changes can't be done because leadership doesn't allocate the resources, some can't be done because people on the ground don't give a shit. Since there are problems that can't be solved without leadership buy-in, you're definitely right that you can't fix these problems without having a role where you have a real ability to change the culture, and that you should be realistic about that.