> Most developers I have worked with are incapable or unwilling to measure things (on any level), therefore they are incapable or unwilling to be engineers.
You should rather consider this is a sign that software development is also partly an art, and not only an engineering discipline. Also, not all (good) developers are the same: some are more "artsy" and some are more "engineeringy".
The elegance of software architecture is an art, the ability to organize things in a way that scales is multiple directions. The ability to practice, such as solving for data management, accessibility, security, performance, and such are disciplines that can be largely addressed by exceeding conformance to specified guidance. That is not a 100% cure, but it is certainly a greater than 80% cure. Due diligence is all that is expected.
My favorite example is accessibility, because the conformance document is so well written. Accessibility can be really challenging, but the WCAG definitions are so well written with step-by-step success criteria that accessibility can be achievable by anybody.
You should rather consider this is a sign that software development is also partly an art, and not only an engineering discipline. Also, not all (good) developers are the same: some are more "artsy" and some are more "engineeringy".