As the author mentions. This was a failure on and down the chain, from QA to PMs. When I see software like this, it reeks to me of contractor work. We hire them to handle something that we don’t have time for our core team, and or something not very important. The result is the devs do a minimal job to get paid. QA doesn’t care and the PMs either didn’t see it, or have bigger fish to fry.
That’s funny. I used to work for a high-end consulting company, and we always marveled at the level of dysfunction in our clients’ IT departments. They would call us in when their devs couldn’t/wouldn’t do the work. We were pretty expensive by comparison, but at least we got the job done. I guess it just depends on the kind of contractor you hire.
I don't think there's a logical inconsistency here. Imagine that the quality of work we can expect from a contractor with no particular investment in your long-term success is a 7. If your internal team can produce a 10 given the time, you'd look at that and think it's not very good. On the other hand, if your internal team can only manage a 4, hey, go with the contractor.