[legion]

Most of the externals I work with care about one thing: getting their defined piece of work done by the deadline. "Done" means handing off work, it does not mean meeting coding standards, actually testing, and meeting performance objectives. I think that it is largely a result on the deficient contracts we use, but still, there are different motivations.

"Hacking together" doesn't fly where I work, but a lot of externals attempt it anyway to get things done quickly. I can't tell you how many times I have had to completely re-work what an external has said was "final".

Don't get me wrong, I've worked with some real high-quality externals-- some that are irreplaceable members of my team. The bad ones stick in my memory though.