No company would actually phrase it as "a willingness to get often arbitrary work done on schedule with acceptable quality", but in all but the most raw of star

No company would actually phrase it as "a willingness to get often arbitrary work done on schedule with acceptable quality", but in all but the most raw of startups, that is what they mean. That's the reality of having a "job". If you can't abide working that way - and it's totally reasonable to feel that way - you need to find a different career path through the industry than "Senior Web Engineer" or whatever the title is.