So your advice can maybe translated as "fire your customer".
And I partly agree. There are two sides though. For one, as I'm growing and learning, I see more potential to make things better, more robust, more usable and long lasting. On the other hand we (small team) have a principle that we don't sell things our clients don't need, and we make that very clear and have said "no" in the past to adhere to that principle.
So it is really a balancing act of really understanding and communicating what technical and design quality means vs. understanding how providing it will positively impact our relationships and their goals.
I've been thinking more and more about this issue in recent years, because I realized that I/we cannot compete on quantity or speed, but rather on trust and quality if that makes sense.
> I'm puzzled by your reply though, about "having a good time" and "talking to a manager". How is that relevant to dbg23's point?
I believe dbg23's point is coming from frustration of what needs to happen to get to this "success" as a software engineer ("to create higher quality software"), if one side believes it's good enough to have "meh quality software - but good sales team", I was sharing my thought on how to deal with this frustration..