A better way of stating it, "It goes to show how few folks truly value testing in isolation" that is, having good tests in isolation is seen as a nice ideal to

A better way of stating it, "It goes to show how few folks truly value testing in isolation" that is, having good tests in isolation is seen as a nice ideal to pursue, but delivering working code first trumps all. "How do you know it works?" is a common reply to this line of reasoning, obviously we all have an idea of what "working" looks like, it's just whether or not we have gone the extra step of formalizing it in the form of tests.