For freelance in particular, 'quality' is too nebulous. It is far too easy to nitpick why a solution was good-but-not-great and to talk the price down once the work has already been done.
This holds true in most things. Quality is really hard to measure. It is much easier to say 'well, our start-up worked 15 hours per day, who could blame us for failing?'
It is a particularly American mindset that hard work is the only thing that matters. In the valley, you'll hear people say all the time that execution is the only thing that matters. It sounds great because it superficially appears measurable.
Unfortunately, you can spend a long time executing well on a dumb idea. Color is an example off the top of my head. Beautiful application, worked really well, but ultimately sharing images with the people that happen to be around you isn't something the people want.
This holds true in most things. Quality is really hard to measure. It is much easier to say 'well, our start-up worked 15 hours per day, who could blame us for failing?'
It is a particularly American mindset that hard work is the only thing that matters. In the valley, you'll hear people say all the time that execution is the only thing that matters. It sounds great because it superficially appears measurable.
Unfortunately, you can spend a long time executing well on a dumb idea. Color is an example off the top of my head. Beautiful application, worked really well, but ultimately sharing images with the people that happen to be around you isn't something the people want.