Planning for Failure - You Get the Reputation You Deserve

"[ This company which I left was ] willing to negotiate on quality."

(In this case with its customers.)

Agreed, it's a BIG mistake, outside of harsh genuine deadline situations (e.g. "We've got to get these 5 million pieces of paper scanned and 500,000 OCRed by X date for the court case." (A real situation that I solved the latter part of).)