[xyzzy123]

I can think of 50 things which would make the project I'm on faster, better and more secure but the business is not particularly interested in them right now.

The business wants its stated requirements met (plus a short list of key non-functionals) while minimising cost. Performance is not even specified. I don't think there's any "lost knowledge" involved in this particular case, they just don't want to pay me to make it better than it needs to be.

Doing my job well means minimising the time (and by implication the attention and effort) I put in to the software.

This seems quite directly opposed to the artisanal ethos.

[soco]

An artisan was historically a guy working for himself in a small market shop, carving at a chair or sewing leather shoes. The masons tasked to build the castle walls were not "artisans" so there we could see the same focus on efficiency - although a bit of beauty had still its place here and there. My point? Today we don't have those artisan shops, just expectations from regular masons to carve gargoyles at every wall corner.