[iabacu]

"...only enjoy generalizing, optimizing, refactoring, designing, and take zero pleasure in delivering an actual usable product"

Too many projects suffer immensely because of people who don't give a shit about delivering. In that mode, anything is an excuse: we need to reactor, we need to build a better framework, we need to revisit the requirements, etc.

Then real progress gets slowed down because of some ill fitting development philosophy that some of those folks pulled out of their asses.

What you need are wise programmers that care about delivering product, wise enough to balance long term maintenability and code health with actual delivery schedule.

The keyword is "wise".

[alkonaut]

Of course I take some pleasure in delivering products, and I try very hard to not over engineer or over generalize. I take pleasure in it, that doesn't (necessarily) mean I overdo it.

But if the job didn't have those elements I wouldn't be in it - and our product would be suffering from that too.

Wise devs are hard to come by.