Yup and lots of whom started with programming as a hobby, and could chase after any shiny thing they saw, or run off whenever on any side quest that interested them.
Nobody wants to pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars to navel gaze, or run off down whatever path you feel is mathematically satisfying. Do that on your own time. You're being paid hundreds of thousands dollars to deliver business value - so do that. Build mathematical towers on your own time.
It's like paying someone by the day to paint your house and they paint the Mona Lisa in white paint on white and take 3x as long because it's more artistically beautiful even if the end result is just an all white painted house.
"Don't you see the deeper hidden artistic structure!?"