In my experience, it never takes long for "the business" to come back and say "I thought you fixed this." Yes. But the problem is that without the sub-optimal

In my experience, it never takes long for "the business" to come back and say "I thought you fixed this." Yes. But the problem is that without the sub-optimal time-saving hack the business might not have come back at all. A business that can afford to pay people to fix the hacks that kept it solvent last month is called successful. [1] So, there's a balance. Inevitably, it's impossible to get the balance quite right, so even the optimal software engineering job involves spending half your time complaining about overengineered code and the other half complaining about underengineered code. [1] Of course, many businesses just pay people to paper over last month's hacks with a new month's worth of hacks, ad infinitum. That is sort of like success... for as long as the house of cards stays up. But it is also hell.