It's meaningless. But what would you have them say? "Although our software may not be the highest quality out there, it costs less and still gets the job done"? Not gonna make many sales that way. Any company that sells a software product is either going to (1) claim it's high quality; or (2) not talk about the quality of the software, but instead talk about what the product will do for you. The latter approach tends to be more successful, unless you really are selling a software product to be used by software developers. In which case they might actually care about and inspect the quality of the code they're getting -- but probably only after the contract is signed and it's too late.

It reminds me of the CEO or VPE of every tech company I have ever worked for, who goes on at great length about how his company hires only "the best and the brightest" developers out there, how we're the "cream of the crop", how we have a "team of all superstars". Well, but of course we are! Who would want to work for a team of halfwits and losers, or even a team of the good but not the great?

It's great ego pumping when you're young enough not to have heard it before, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I am neither the best nor the brightest out there. I'm somewhere between the cream of the crop and the scum that floats to the top. And my only connection to superstars involves jumping around a living room in my underwear, and I'd rather not say too much about that. At the same time, the CEO/VPE isn't lying. In fact, he probably believes every word that comes out of his mouth; it's part of the mental defect that makes you capable of reaching that sort of position. It helps you sell, I think.

Sorry. Kind of got on a roll there. The only other thing I wanted to mention was that you're only talking about code quality. More relevant is product quality, which is measured by more than the code or even the spec. Code quality is a horrible predictor of a company's success (sometimes it's even backwards, when you spend too much time pumping "quality" into something that customers don't want or is rapidly being obsoleted by a lower-quality but cheaper and shinier competitor). Product quality has a better correlation -- although the extent of the CEO's brain defect can often trump even that, especially in the early stages of a startup.