[jchw]

This analogy is a bit tortured but it's honestly pretty good anecdata that something probably doesn't generally kill you if you've been around people doing it for 15 years and none of them have died yet. It can kill you, but that doesn't mean it generally does.

I'd love to come to the conclusion that it's wrong, but it's right. Most companies absolutely 100% can afford to ship bugs: the proof? They're doing it, they have been doing it, they will continue to do it. That doesn't mean that every company can, always, forever. A single really bad bug can tank a company. In the right conditions, simply being buggier to a superior competitor can tank a company. However, those are mostly just things developers fantasize about. The market is by and large not decided by how elegant and well-designed your software is, moreso in some verticals than others. In fact, this is basically true for almost anything that isn't explicitly developer oriented in the first place.

Just look at enterprise software. Jesus Christ.

[nmilo]

People smoke from 15-20 years old but still don't die in their 30s. It doesn't mean it's not bad for your health. This is the same thing, it's bad for the health of the company. High dev turnover, poor working conditions, and productivity issues can all lead to a death from a thousand cuts, and even if the company doesn't actually go under, you can't say that a company didn't suffer because of it.

[jchw]

I'm going to be honest, this analogy is just not that good. You can draw some parallels to cancer and bad workplace culture, but it's a very skin-deep/awkward comparison in my opinion.