They still have to answer to the managers.
Also in the enterprise space code changes are measured in dollars/euro/yan/... per hour, not engineer happiness.
Eh, that's true just about everywhere... Code = Money.
You spend some money, get new and hopefully better code, and with some luck you will get a return on the investment, ie more money than you spent on doing it.
Unless you are doing it for fun. Or don't know what to do with all the money you have.
You misunderstood me.
That better code had a cost of 1 000 euros, due to the amount of hours spent on it.
How much profit did those euros spent on developer salary brought to the business revenue?
Another important factor is today's engineers are tomorrows architects.