There is some truth in there... Too many cargo cult devs out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_

There is some truth in there... Too many cargo cult devs out there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_programming But to answer your question: It depends on the business you're in and the dev culture your company established. In the most consulting shops or early stage startups I've seen the situation that you're describing. Cranking out code because visible features / products is the only thing a customer cares about. But in companies that build a sustainable product that needs to scale things are different. They embrace good architecture TDD/BDD. They embrace time for refactoring. Maybe you should switch your job :-)