I totally agree. I work on the private sector, coming from a research position too. I was also focused on the "interesting" side of the problem: the modeling, integrating domain knowledge into the analysis, drawing all sorts of plots... But there were other unavoidable and "uninteresting" needs for the research project, like building a data gathering system with its API and everything. This required my best software engineering abilities. Needless to say my best weren't precisely THE best, so as the project got bigger, the not-so temporary fixes increased, as well as poor design choices (if any). This finally led to a complete reestructure and almost fresh start.
I feel some of it could be avoided, so I learned the hard way that the whole modelling + software engineering process is a subtle craft. It is important to take care on the implications of your code and, specially, on how its done, since it may fall back onto you eventually. This reconciled me with the more technical stuff (my tools) to eventually put up a good work in a more satisfying way.
I feel some of it could be avoided, so I learned the hard way that the whole modelling + software engineering process is a subtle craft. It is important to take care on the implications of your code and, specially, on how its done, since it may fall back onto you eventually. This reconciled me with the more technical stuff (my tools) to eventually put up a good work in a more satisfying way.