If the product being developed doesn't meet the quality bar, we don't ship it. Irrespective of deadlines being missed.

If the candidate being interviewed doesn't meet the quality bar, they are not hired. Irrespective of how understaffed we are.

Because to circumvent the quality bar is to accept the lower consequences that come with it.

Holding the quality bar is hard work, and there are usually tremendous short-term pressures to circumvent it. And companies like Amazon have a defined role of a bar raiser in several processes (especially hiring interviews) to ensure that the bar is held despite short-term pressures to not do so.

What are the areas in your own life that you have a quality bar for?

What do you do to ensure you don't circumvent it?

The strongest (and the hardest) way to do it, of course, is to inculcate the quality bar into our identities. People like us don't do things like this, no matter how desperate.