I think I see one point of confusion.<p>In the cases where a company chose to prioritize speed of delivery, it was typically after an overwhelming number of engineers (not just me) had conducted research on the system, the business needs, and so forth, and presented quite a lot of evidence that the fast approach would actually cost the business more money than the more careful approach, even in the short term.<p>When I speak about prioritizing quality, I am speaking mostly from the point of view of the book Peopleware, especially the chapter called &quot;Quality ... if time permits&quot; in which they offer a lot of evidence to debunk the idea that there must be a trade-off between quality and speed of delivery.<p>In fact, in the few cases where I&#x27;ve been tasked with pursuing the higher-quality option, I have found that the claims of Peopleware are extremely accurate: people are often more motivated and more productive when they are asked to make something of high quality. As a result, they often actually make something that is both higher quality and delivered sooner than the alternative when they are asked to prioritize pure speed of delivery.<p>At any rate, I&#x27;m attempting to speak from a position where I am talking about adding value in the business&#x27;s bottom line -- not at all just my personal desire for pet projects or Ivory Tower planning.<p>I can see how my earlier comments did not include these details and it would be easy to read my earlier comments and to think that I merely wanted to focus on quality for the sake of my own interests.<p>However, that is certainly not the case.<p>I&#x27;m very glad you pointed this out, because it helped me to see that I need to include more details about the basis of my feelings -- which is a long-running set of research results that illustrate the bottom-line productivity benefits of things like private office space and explicit focus on quality of engineering.