Is this such a bad thing? Engineers often have a tendency to to focus too much on writing 'good code', and forget the bigger picture of what they're working on.

Is this such a bad thing? Engineers often have a tendency to to focus too much on writing 'good code', and forget the bigger picture of what they're working on. Technical debt is a real issue, but it's something to manage, not eliminate. I'd much rather be in a place where most engineers have at least half a pragmatic eye on products, features, and ux rather than only caring about code quality and the elegance of their algorithms. Yeah, it can also be good to have a few of those code quality sticklers around to keep everyone honest, but they shouldn't be running things or setting the tone. I think a big part of the reason a management tier is needed at all in a lot of smaller companies is the general unwillingness of engineers to sacrifice code purity for expediency.