The harsh truth of the matter is that in B2B software engineering, you can usually get away with providing a shitty product, then charging to fix the bugs you i

The harsh truth of the matter is that in B2B software engineering, you can usually get away with providing a shitty product, then charging to fix the bugs you introduced. It's worse than 'clients aren't willing to pay for a premium product', it's that they are willing pay you to clean up your own mess, but not willing to pay a much smaller sum upfront. Internally at my small business we have stopped using the word bug, and started calling it defect to change the thinking about this. Bugs sound innocent, like they just 'creep in' and there is almost nothing you can do about it as a software engineer. Defects can be prevented, mitigated, or fixed. It places the responsibility in our hands again to deal with it and prevent it. Zero defects is probably not a realistic target (same with any production line for hardware), but it does help to frame it in the same way and take proper responsibility.