And at an early startup, making the damn thing work is all that really matters. (I'm at a laterish startup and we do attempt to follow some process and patterns where it would structure things enough to enable cleaner onboarding as we grow).
No viable position for most companies (or even most startups) to take.
Not if it comes at the cost of making your co-workers hate you for the messes you continually leave behind. And to lose faith in upper management for holding you up to be a "rockstar" for doing so. And for them to start looking for new jobs, as a result.
The optimal level for basic hygiene and defense programming in a startup is -- perhaps a notch or two lower than in a staid, manager-driven post-startup company. But certainly not zero.
"The nose knows", as they say.
I love dumb, straightforward code BTW. It's my guiding aesthetic much of the time in fact. But that wasn't what I was referring to, here.
Rather the "too smart for its own good... and utterly brain-fucked" end product which is the calling card of your average rockstar / ninja developer.
An interesting, and a fairly broad observation. Can you elaborate?