In practice you might have tension on a team between those who favor speed vs stability, but I resent the characterization that it is an inherent trait of the programmer.

If you want to be a great startup engineer you have to exercise judgement; knowing when to do something quick and dirty, what to polish, what code is likely to live a long time, when and how to address various aspects of scalability, etc. Someone who just has one mode of operation and does not consider the context is always a liability unless their role is very rigidly defined and management knows what they're doing.