there are deadlines to meet, flaky requirements, and tech debt
That's where software development grows from skill to art. What do customers actually want? What mostly likely will be their next requirement? Can we optimize the API to speed up development and use the extra time we got to improve stability? Which projects should be reported to the management proudly and which ones should be quietly sneaked into the codebase? And so on so forth.
Using your chef analogy, at some point it's no longer about flipping the burgers, it's about organizing the kitchen, optimizing purchases and educating the freshmen.
I think this notion is where I'm trying to steer my mentality about work. I know the right things to do, I see patterns of why they don't get implemented, so my focus is "what creative solutions can I devise to do what is right in this environment".
It's just a matter of putting creativity in a different place.
That's where software development grows from skill to art. What do customers actually want? What mostly likely will be their next requirement? Can we optimize the API to speed up development and use the extra time we got to improve stability? Which projects should be reported to the management proudly and which ones should be quietly sneaked into the codebase? And so on so forth.
Using your chef analogy, at some point it's no longer about flipping the burgers, it's about organizing the kitchen, optimizing purchases and educating the freshmen.