Why is it that many software developers dont pay enough attention to requirement engineering are there ever circumstances where you can skip it?

Because they are lazy. With the possible exception of very trivial projects, every project needs requirements engineering so that you can understand the requirements. Failure to perform the requirements engineering often leads to rework and lost effort. In point of fact, even the trivial projects get requirements engineering - its just that the experienced developer has already done that before and can apply that knowledge to the new task at hand.