In my experience, a careless engineer will create something brittle and unwieldy that works at first glance, declare success, and move on, leaving others to deal with a painful mess. A thoughtful engineer will think hard about design, comment where there be dragons, and often get rewarded by being reassigned to one of the aforementioned messes.

The enduring tension of this line of work, in my opinion, is how to balance my desire to take pride in my work with my desire not to be a thankless janitor for the chronically cavalier. Not to mention that there's value in a product that gets out the door while the competitors are still trying to make things perfect.