[gedy]

Sure but then incentivize engineers to hack it out knowing they'll have to deal with the shit show if you become successful. Sorry but most "startup engineers" aren't , and it's basically bad for their careers to implement "the vision" in a throw-away manner.

[throwway120385]

I don't think it's true that it's bad for your career to do it that way. What happens a lot is we think we have to tell the story of how we gloriously implemented some powerful overkill technical stack in a startup with 4 months of runway to be taken seriously as a Real Engineer.

You can also tell the story of how you worked really hard to engineer a solution that was good enough to carry a startup to viability given the 4 months you had. I would choose the second person over the first person because they have a sense of practicality which is really important. But it can be career limiting to not communicate that in your resume somehow, so I understand how you can think it would be a bad thing. And as always you have to be aware that your employer is in that situation, and so if they don't tell you then you're screwed.

There are a lot of people out there who want to hire practical engineers. It's just a different market and you have to signal differently in your resume.

[datavirtue]

Let's be real. Most first builds are done by very low talent Indian and Vietnamese developers with zero technical direction. Once the business grows, real engineers and architects are brought in to fight the horrendous, almost laughable, mess to pull the company back from certain failure...without getting any credit.