I dunno how to put this in a non-controversial way, but...at some point, I switched from thinking a desirable, throw-the-money-at-them developer is somebody who writes a lot of code to somebody who understands things and is capable of understanding new ones when they arise.

I'm not saying that to excuse thrash. Thrash is bad. But like..."oh, at some point you'll have to have somebody who actually understands how the thing we use to make money works"--you should have that person anyway! It's an existential threat to your business not to.

Understanding things is our job. Unless you're somewhere where understanding things isn't valued, and 1) it's gonna eventually fail, and 2) you have better places to be.