Status and the appearance of being smart.

I have a bee in my bonnet about this software complexity issue. Perhaps it takes large amounts of humility to accept that your job is fairly mundane, and only needs simple code to get the job done? I mean: who wants to turn spanners on a Toyota when you can imagine you're working for NASA, and introduce fascinating new paradigms to your work, that ultimately add complexity. I suspect that's why i've joined so many teams that have tied themselves up in knots of un-grok-able indirection. Another theory I have is that people encounter bad code, and misdiagnose it, identifying the (wrong) solution as needing a big complex architecture.

Gotta pad your CV/promo packet somehow.

It's pure dopamine, from the process, for me. "Eureka!" is a hell of a drug.

There you go. Instead: compression, efficiency and speed are better traits of intelligence in software engineers building these systems and being aware of trade-offs.

Rather than building rube goldberg contraptions and not only it is difficult to refactor them but can kill the entire business if the maintenance costs continue to increase.

If you really want to work with the most pretentious, attention-seeking, optics-loving people, work in robotics. God dammit, how I love the field, but most people there are insufferable.