Comment by throwaway277432

I care. It's frustrating sometimes, but I still can't help myself.

Working with people that also care (and are empowered to do something about it) is the greatest thing. I've worked in several such teams over the years and it's absolutely awesome.

On the opposite side, working on a team that doesn't is the worst.

I've actually been reprimanded by middle managers for caring, because caring sometimes takes more time than planned, and an arbitrary internal deadline wasn't met. I've come to realize they do in fact care, just not about the software but only about their own promotion. And the core issue is that they don't actually know why their own deadlines and feature requirements exist, they just get them handed to them.

This is different when you work closer to and with a customer directly. They know exactly what's important and why they need X or Y. When someone actually has to deliver results and deal with the users, they are more invested in having a working system. Here, caring involves finding the "right" person (usually not the one in charge), talking to them and figuring out what they really need (not want) and how they're using the system.

In such a setting, caring and building stuff that truly works is also reflected in performance reviews as everyone including the customer is happy.

You really have to pick your battles. I've had to make some concessions myself: some stuff turns out to be more complicated or unclear than it is at first glance, and sometimes you really don't have and can't make time for it. And in really large companies, there are sometimes so many people involved that you often can't get the answers you need or access to the person you need. Or you end up at legal which is more often than not a dead end.