If you need a metaphor to understand this perspective: there's a difference between building a bridge that gets some cars over it, and building a bridge that will continue to get cars over it, in thirty years, while accounting for the expected investment of maintenance over those thirty years, and supporting an expanded pedestrian and bike lane added ten years down the line, to the best of the ability of the engineer during the initial planning, while keeping build costs under control.

Yeah; working only with Good code is a luxury. But simultaneously, admitting to recognize "It Works" as the most important metric to evaluate good engineering practices by is quite literally what led to the East Palestine disaster last week. Being able to abscond from the responsibility of the repercussions of your "It Works" solution is also a luxury; or, charging those "obscene contracting rates" you talk about.

Software Engineering is nascent. We don't always know, and even less often have a good shared language to talk about, what is "The Right Decision" in every context. That isn't an excuse to not try.