> they won't make any sacrifices if those sacrifices require losing money or status
That's not preferring good software to bad software, though. In order for a value to be meaningful when expressed, it has to result in some kind of trade off. If you value honesty over safety but never are put in a situation where you have to choose between honesty and safety, then that value is fairly meaningless.
That's fair. I overstated my point a bit -- if a project was on schedule and it could be delayed by one day to improve something nebulous, many would agree. It's just that the tradeoffs are never that small, so you never actually see it happen, i.e, the preference is extremely minor.