Yes, not every programmer cares about good code. But of those that do, also not all of them can agree on what good code is.
And not all good programmers can write good code, for one reason or another.
It is way less black and white than good vs bad/mediocre programmers.
Some of these are not like the others. Not allowing a carpenter to use the most suitable tools is petty. Not allowing them 30 days may make sense depending on the business context. What if it's a stool that's going to be sat on once and then thrown away? Or there's only 10 days salary in the bank but then an invester will see it and may pay for 100 days work?
Good code usually takes more time than bad code (depending on the reason!) and often it is worth that extra time (and the fight to get it). But sometimes it's better not to and that's OK.
It’s all about trade-offs. Which many developers don’t - or just refuse to - understand.
My point was that without some context this kind of conversations - about good and bad code and good and bad coders - are not very useful.
Personally I believe good code is an reliable, maintainable, transparent and well designed solution for a problem (or a set of problems). And that means for a small problem aome ad hoc script can be good, while for a big complicated set of problems an elaborate well coded project with a build system can be good code.
But what I believe is that there are ideal solutions from an engineering standpoint, and there are ideal solutions from an business standpoint. And those sometimes don't align with each other. E.g. when you solve a core problem that should really be dealt with properly with a quick fix that might be a cheap way to reach the short term business goals, but it could shape a lot of engineering decisions in the future in a bad way and maybe even become a business problem in the long term.
What I found remarkable wasn't that there are badly managed projects, but that there are software devs who seem to think there is no other way than doing it like that.
I think the abundance of jobs - maybe not anymore? - also added to the problem.
I’ve received countless CVs where the developer didn’t stay at the same job for more than a year, max two. Now, it could be that some of the jobs sucked, bit it is highly unlikely that all of them sucked.