This is not true, I can confidently say, most of the time. Engineers generally want to build software they think is a good trade off between fulfilling the spec and not being too hard to build.
This does not generally translate to good software. It’s not a detriment of character or anything like that. They’re just lazy like most people are
Classically people got into software engineering because they liked writing code and they needed a way to pay the bills. Plenty of retired software engineers still code because it is part of who they are.
a no-true-scotsman fallacy.
A company should be able to build working software even without good engineers. Just like how TCP can deliver ordered packets over unreliable connections - you change the processes and systems to do it. Of course, you give up some things - such as speed and agility in that case.
For most people, a job is a job. It's not something they want to dedicate their life to - that's for artists and craftsman, and not many people are of that ilk in the modern day.
Most of the people I've had the pleasure of working with have a love for the craft.
Sadly I understand that with how messed to the economy is now days, making a good living in a US costal city doing anything else but software is rather unrealistic...