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The worst programmer I knew never had any productivity problem; if anything he produced too much code, outpacing the others' ability to maintain certain levels of quality.

He ended up promoted; in many organizations, people that hack the code rather than properly design and build sustainable solutions are highly valued.

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Yeah, that must have been my collegue. Usually he was in charge of implementing all the new stuff, because he was able to deliver fast. And then I had to refactor, or usually just rewrite and redesign the whole thing, because it was immediatelly unmaintenable. I didn't mind, since at the end of the day, he was really good and doing these prototypes and selling them to management. I was good at making the application last and stable, so it kinda worked out.

Was he promoted to a job where he did more of that, or a job where they could make him stop writing code and do something else?

I ended up leaving, as did most of the other senior developers, so I wouldn't know the details.

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