[speed_spread]

If you quit, they'll just hire someone who's willing to do the crappy stuff. As a bonus, they'll probably pay less for that person. Or they'll spread the burden over the remaining staff. Or they'll outsource the whole team to some remote hell. Quality is not a bottom-up thing, everybody has to be in on it.

Most management will exchange quality for quick gain whenever they can because they're there to make money and don't plan for long term. Because they can also leave the ship when the sum of their mistakes starts to sink it.

[repelsteeltje]

> Quality is not a bottom-up thing, everybody has to be in on it.

I like it. But I've seen at least one place (a start up) where (to some extent) quality was a bottom up thing. Eventually it became a share value, but it was rooted in developers saying: No, we need more time.

On the other hand, I don't know of examples where quality was forced top-down — places where a senior developer would say: I'm done/I don't care/this is good enough and their manager telling them to spend more time on a feature or teaching them about software design.

[speed_spread]

Ah yes, rogue quality enforcement, I've done it too. It's all fun and games until some nosey manager questions the overeager developer who naively lets them in on the scheme and thus exposes the whole team for the bunch of non productive rebels that they are and then it's back to square zero.

Quality conscious management doesn't impose strict rules themselves but rather maintain a climate of mutual trust between business and technical where constraints and problems can be surfaced, discussed and addressed openly. Respect for technology is sorely missing from the business class curriculum, yet so much depends on it.