What you’re saying is true. Yet, I can only willingly go along with so much terribleness before it hurts my soul. We only have so many days to do things we care about. The thought of throwing away 6 months of them for no defensible reason horrifies me, and I can’t, won’t, participate.

Edit: for a compensating control, I pair with senior leadership I can directly ask about this things. “Hey CTO, is there a reason we’re doing this thing so ass-backward? No? Can I go fix it then? Thanks!” Or, “oh, because we’re stalling to avoid this horrible customer’s demand, and no one’s really going to be working on it as their day job? Sigh, alright, I’ll look the other way.”

I let them be political so that I don’t have to be.