I don’t chose what gets built.

Yeah, this is definitely true. I’m the sort of software engineer who logs off after work and works on my own side projects for the passion of it. At work, I do what I can to advocate for better ways of doing things. Not just for customers, but just to keep the cognitive load manageable. But I definitely have to choose my battles. Battles with management and also battles with my coworkers who might think such-and-such super-heavy framework should be imported so they can use one three-line function that it provides.