alt Hacker NewsQuality is not rewarded at most companies, it's not going to turn into more money, it might turn into less work later, but in all likelihood, the author won't be around to reap the benefits of less work later because they will have moved onto another company.
On the contrary, since more effort doesn't yield more money, but less effort can yield the same money, the strategy is to contract the time spent on work to the smallest amount, LLMs are currently the best way to do that.
I don't see why this has to be framed as a bad thing. Why should anyone care about the quality of software that they don't use? If you wouldn't work on it unless you were paid to, and you can leave if and when it becomes a problem, then why spend mental energy writing even a single line?
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I find doing my job as best as I can intrinsically rewarding. Even tho I am getting paid peanuts and have to give more than half of those peanuts to my government. I'm that kind of sucker.
Not everything is about money. Have you never wanted to be good at something because you enjoy it? Or do something for the love of the craft? Have you heard of altruism?
Because nothing can beat productivity of a motivated team building code that they are proud of. The mental energy spent becomes the highest reward. As for profit, it _compounds_ as for every other business.
The fact that this is lost as a common knowledge whereas shiny examples arises regularly is very telling.
But it is not liked in business because reproducing it requires competence in the industry, and finance deep pockets don’t believe in competence anymore.