At this point in my career I'm typically the one advising my manager(s) because someone else already paid me to make or watch someone else make the mistake we'r

At this point in my career I'm typically the one advising my manager(s) because someone else already paid me to make or watch someone else make the mistake we're considering making. Perhaps I've just been fortunate to work with mostly smart and reasonable people so my advice is usually respected or if it's not there's usually a good reason - if it was a consistent pattern that I was just being handed random, ill thought out tasks with no context or reasoning I'd probably question what I'd done to get myself into that situation in the first place. I consider advising and guiding the engineering organization as a whole part of my job description but there's a point at which just doing the damn thing wins out over protracted debate and sitting in endless meetings. At that point my focus typically shifts to mitigating toil/drudgery/future maintenance for myself and my teammates - I've cursed the names of people I've never met because I've spent months undoing work with their name all over it and my driving motivation in situations like that is to not have my name be the one being cursed by whoever takes my place. I take pride in my work but I don't really tie my sense of self-worth to it at all, which I've seen end poorly for engineers who become emotionally invested in their pet solution or project. When you realize anything you come up with, even if it's the greatest, most beautiful, most elegant solution will likely be replaced/rewritten/become full of hacky bullshit within the span of a few years it makes it easier to accept that.