This reminds me of the "three tribes of programming: mathematical poetry, machine hackery, and business value". I think each SWE gets similar but different feelings of satisfaction. I knew a coworker who cared about the result, and little about the code he wrote. This was foreign to me when I saw it, as I was and still am definitely in the love for "math poetry" camp when it's possible.
https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/