It's not just getting permission--and maybe I'm generalizing way too far here--but it seems much of "enterprise" java culture is oriented around commoditized, interchangeable cog people who meet KPIs just like it's composed of commoditized, interchangeable components which implement interfaces. So they get cog behaviors, as designed.
Polished, masterful, crafted product is hard to KPI for.
I think you’re generalizing way too much. Java is old. The libraries are old. There is a lot of bad old code out there, and very little glory in fixing it.
Polished, masterful, crafted product is hard to KPI for.