> These posts both make me violently aroused as well as profoundly depressed basically every employer I’ve ever had in 30 years doesn’t value such analysis.

Couldn't agree more, except on the timeline. In my experience, the 90s and most of the 00s proper engineering like this was the norm in silicon valley and I loved it. It's the last 10-15 years that PMs have taken over and now it's all so superficial and uninteresting. I've moved away from hands-on development work because nobody is doing anything intellectually rewarding anymore. But I wish I was doing hard-core engineering like it used to be.