Well yes. But as the problem solver, there is nothing better than when someone has a problem, and you have a solution ready at hand which came from lambda calculus or distributed systems tricks or some crazy shit from On Lisp. That is why they are paying you, not to cranks out good dutiful straightforward solutions but for clever ideas that are simple to implement and operate. The engineering is both awareness and skill in following processes to get great cheap and effective solutions. Otherwise you end up with 20 million lines of code and all the aesthetically sensitive people have have to leave the company.