This mentality is why the industry is having layoffs. You should have stayed in academia if you didn't want to worry about business value. No field is exempt

This mentality is why the industry is having layoffs. You should have stayed in academia if you didn't want to worry about business value. No field is exempt from the need to balance the two. We could make planes safer by making them cost 100x as much and then no one would be able to afford to fly. The difference between an ok engineer and an exceptional engineer is being able to pull your head out of the weeds and realize no piece of engineering exists in isolation.