[lubujackson]

I have been working at startups for 20+ years and would say the "hack it out/craftsman" dichotomy is the wrong mindset. I would say the more interesting idea of working at a startup is that you can use your experience and nearness to the business objectives to know when you should hack something together vs. "craft it".

But to me, crafting the software is less about making a test suite, robust observability, etc. and more about architecting the code with the right "hard" and "soft" elements.

A DB structure in flux may start out as a JSON field so we can tweak it without hassle. Something that may need to support heavy volume may have more modular and minimal components up front that can be swapped out for more performant ones down the road.

Now if you are at a micro-managed startup where you have no time or latitude to affect any of those decisions, then you are going to have a bad time no matter what. But work at a startup introduces a more flexible concept of "craft" that can be as equally (or more) satisfying than following "best practices" in a consistent way.