[downriver]

Engineers often overestimate how bad the “greenfielder” is for the business. In most cases you aren’t selling an elegant technical solution, you’re just selling a solution. And if you don’t ship it ASAP you won’t have time to worry about maintainability, you’ll be bankrupt.

For most businesses, a greenfielder is a 10x engineer.

(This is just an aside, I agree that there exist “true” 10x-ers having had the joy of working with 2 of them over the last 20 years).

[pkolaczk]

I didn't mean just inelegant code, but buggy, incorrect, incomprehensible code that does not meet business requirements and, after being demoed internally to management and getting all the praise, requires significantly more work to get to production level quality.

Anybody can be a 10x if they don't have to solve the problem correctly.

Also, pushing a very low quality product to production too early might just as well kill the company as pushing a great product too late. History knows plenty of late comers who won the market.

A programmer comes to an interview.

- What are your strengths?

- I'm fast at maths.

- Cool, how much is 1563 * 74?

- 66689

- That's not even close to correct!

- But it was fast.