The startup grind is often the same: ship fast, but maintain a high bar of quality. At least that’s the sentiment. Those things are in opposition and the system incentivizes people to just move on.

Miguel Fernandez, writing for Slack Design, describes why shared standards matter:

Craft is subjective, until it isn’t. Disagreement surfaces the moment you have to define it. Is this interaction good enough? Is this component polished? Without shared standards, these discussions become battles of personal taste rather than principled decisions. You can’t argue craft in a document. You can only experience it.

That makes the quality bar a cross-functional working agreement rather than a designer’s private standard. Fernandez continues:

It seems like craft competes with velocity. Engineering and Product are often rewarded for shipping, not refining. Craft requires slowing down at key moments, which feels costly when measured against sprint commitments. The incentive systems work against craft, but this is a false trade-off: craft debt compounds just like technical debt, and eventually you pay for it in churn, reputation, and the slow erosion of what made your product special.

Fernandez then quotes Linear co-founder and CEO Karri Saarinen on the conditions beyond the individual:

“Craft is the mindset that creates quality. But it’s not enough. You need to have the right skills and ideas. You need individuals who take their profession and craft seriously, then build teams that work this way together, and have a company that creates the conditions for it. Not only incentivizing with deadlines and metrics, but also caring if the experience is good enough.”