When the next round of layoffs come Alice is the least needed, so unless she is good at making sure everyone knows she gets the best solutions, she's likely to get canned.
Then when they apply at the new job at the local starup Alice is surely going to fail the first round programming quiz.
If this is a pattern that recurs over weeks, months, and years, the delta in results between Alice and even Bob, let alone Clyde, only opens wider. Alice will surely have other opportunities to do "real programming". Granted, the way Alice is doing it may not be immediately impressive on its own but if it has someone else to compare against it becomes more evident.
I can say I've seen the Clyde solution before, but cpdean's story is rather optimistic. In the real world, the Clyde solution actually delivers late, is usually badly bodged together under the hood due to the too-late recognition of the impending deadline, and will actually create an ongoing maintenance nightmare as his code will be buggy and yet not perform very well no matter how much he bangs on it. In the real world, this sometimes gets combined with a bad manager who sees Clyde engaging in heroics and thinks Clyde is dedicated and stuff, but this is far from a sure thing. That's a very specific kind of bad manager and Clyde would be well advised not to count on having that exact kind of manager. (Heck, I've been Clyde. Very educational. Terrible use of resources.)
Agreed. So looking back are you happy you took Clyde's path? If you had to advise a new grad today, what would you recommend?
Ha! First you have to find a company where the reward for finishing early isn't more work.