> I feel like I am mourning something different: the loss of the desire to seek truth in tech, math etc.

This is what I've been feeling too. It feels increasingly like the professional world has become a tower of scams. It's not worth building technical skills or focusing on quality; your boss doesn't know or care what good work looks like, he/she just wants your work to look good enough to his/her boss, who knows even less about the actual work being performed. And everyone reports up to an MBA CEO who was brought in from a completely different industry.

I want to work in an industry where skill, diligence and expertise is rewarded and respected, but from what I'm seeing political ability is 95% of the game and caring too much about the work is a career liability.