Perhaps the people who care too much aren't that smart in this case.
See the Napoleon anecdote:
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/27/dumb-and-gets-thing...
See the Napoleon anecdote:
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/27/dumb-and-gets-thing...
There is nothing smart about faking and pretending to contribute while doing nothing. All the while taking the rewards and benefits which should actually be going to people who do the real work. This even on a short period of time creates an environment which causes the real contributors to go better places leaving the overall ecosystem starved of much needed work.
Programmer: "I managed to migrate the database with the program I wrote over the past two months"
Hacker: "I migrated the database with 3 lines of code"
The enduring tension of this line of work, in my opinion, is how to balance my desire to take pride in my work with my desire not to be a thankless janitor for the chronically cavalier. Not to mention that there's value in a product that gets out the door while the competitors are still trying to make things perfect.
That's a good observation.
Fortunately I've worked myself into the code troll position on my project - nothing goes into the mainline without my approval. Everyone knows I'll reject code that's not well thought through even in the face of looming deadlines.