I think it really matters what you are hiring for. If you are working on a tough technical problem like a machine learning algorithm around fraud and you have s

I think it really matters what you are hiring for. If you are working on a tough technical problem like a machine learning algorithm around fraud and you have some runway I would always pick the former. If you have tighter timelines and a more well defined technical problem say a new social media app then I would always pick the latter. However, if you can hire two developers, and they both are equally intelligent I would pick one of each to build a team to complete the examples above. When you have two people that respect each other and fall on each side of this scale they can be an incredibly effective team. For instance the former will push the latter to be better at writing code. I see this play out a lot in code reviews. The latter generally will finish more tickets or features than the former, and it will help the former not get caught up in technical details because they don't want to put an unfair burden on their counterpart. This makes the former better at efficiently building programs. They can really balance each other out well and what you can get out of it is a project that finishes on time with a solid foundation. That said I have seen this backfire too, but this is mostly when they don't like or respect each other. What can happen here is the former will say the latter is a terrible programmer, because their code is garbage and is not extensible or naive. Then the latter comes in and says the former doesn't finish anything they get caught up in the details and their production is horrible.... so hiring open minded intelligent human beings is important. Personally I favor finishing projects because I like building things, and I have built a career for myself that I am happy with. My previous comments are once again over simplified, and they were really just a break down of engineers that are predisposed to over engineering. Employers actually don't force you to favor one side or the other in my experience. They want to play to your strengths and what you want out of your career. So if you are a person who likes finishing projects and you are good at it then they will quickly put you in a role where you lead business projects from the engineering perspective. If you favor the science, tech, and engineering side they will put you in a architect or platform role that pushes the underlying technology choices for the business moving forward. Find a good company and go for it if you like programming and building things. I did it and I really enjoy what I do.