[jeremiep]

While I completely agree with you, I don't see this happening anytime soon in big companies with multi-year projects easily worth 7+ figures.

Often enough the deadlines are set in stone within the contract and every milestone is defined ahead of time as well. I've worked with many such companies over the years and its always the exact same story. Some of them are even considered tech giants today.

It's also telling that I consider every single one of these project to be of mediocre quality at best from an engineering point of view. Thing is, our customers usually bleed so much money they barely notice it could be done any better.

People in charge of these projects usually don't know anything about software engineering and add more importance in pleasing investors in the short-term than producing value in the long-term.

[fxn]

Yes, in that case that's not your market. (Unless someone responsible for some of that budget hires you under those "local" conditions.)

But in general, as in any product or service, you have a market. Sometimes you may loose the lead, but it is important to say no to be true to yourself.

What I have found is that people and companies with which I get to work are clients of high quality themselves.