There are definitely organizations where code that works but doesn’t appropriately account for those uncontrolled scenarios will earn you nothing more than a bad reputation. I’ve seen this happen, and I’ve seen their name slowly drift to the bottom of the list when it comes time for a raise or promotion.

I’m generally surprised at how little interest VCs have in this, though. I think a sizable percentage of their misses could’ve been avoided altogether if they had just audited their prototype, or whatever they’re claiming qualifies as their MVP.

People generally don't understand how many different scenarios software needs to account for, and how quickly those inputs can exponentiate into a very big and complex task. Creating the appearance of functional software takes a very small fraction of the time and expertise that it takes to actually make something production-ready, but I don’t think a lot of non-developers understand just how big that gap is.