Yep, exactly. I think most of the time management isn't totally blind to the risks of crap software, it's just a matter of weighing the time & cost vs risk and deciding what the acceptable ratio is. Obviously I want to put out the absolute cleanest, best possible application, but one that gets the job done without crashing is all the business can justify time & cost-wise.

I can understand that, but they seem oblivious to the long term cost too. They usually have no idea how seriously technical debt will affect them 3 years down the road and by the time it gets to the point they can't even hire anyone decent willing to work with the code.