Comment by rachofsunshine

I agree, but I think that's a different argument.

The argument here isn't "the goal of a software engineering job isn't economic", it's "sometimes quality is aligned with economic goals" (which is of course true).

If there's a 10-point scale from 0 = the most hacked-together nonsense and 10 = perfect formal proof of correctness, I'm arguing that a lot of engineers should come down from a 9 to a 6, not to a 0 (or at least, that they'd benefit from picking their battles about when to argue for a 9).

In business contexts, I often argue the opposite, trying to move them from a 3 to a 6, because nontechnical people often underestimate the importance of tech debt. That's not a typical problem on HN, though.