We're in the late stages of capitalism, at a point where everyone is scrambling to extract some wealth, before everything comes crumbling down. No one is even remotely thinking about art of the craft now, or programmer happiness or whatever, and you're branded a loser if you think about that stuff.
I love this late stages of capitalism stuff. Lenin thought that in 1922 but it was his regime that crumbled in 1989. Capitalism is the embodiment of economic freedom & as such is going nowhere. Whether AI survives is another matter, but I’m old & won’t live long enough to find out. I did write beautiful software in the 1980’s when I worked in Switzerland & wrote an entire email program with enough comments, etc, so anyone could maintain it. It was replaced with commercial software within 5 years so the beauty meant nothing.