If only I could do something to fight this... at this job I'm at right now... writing code...

Seriously though if I ever had any concrete assurance that the code I was writing wouldn't get tossed on a whim it would be a lot easier for my team lead to defend the extra time it takes to write clever minimalist efficient code. Everything I write feels like its a mockup or proof of concept first-pass but if it works then its good enough and everyone moves on.

Software is weird.