Many in the software industry derive their job satisfaction from delivering very high quality products on time. It sounds like, now you've been detached from the development team and cannot "show them how it's done" you are prepared to make quality sacrifices so that you can deliver something on time. In order to justify this drop in software quality to yourself you label it "pragmatism".

Over time, as your standards continue to drop are you not concerned that you will become the kind of software producer (for want of a better word) that the lead-developer in you dislikes due to the poor quality standards they have? Is this not the start of the road to the end of job satisfaction?