Builders vs. Mercenaries 🏗️

I have been thinking about two types of engineers I keep running into, and I’m curious if this resonates with you.

Builders care about the users and the problem. They are in it for the mission, and code is simply an instrument towards it. I see them not afraid to ship imperfect code if it solves a real problem, and they do not pursue optimization that doesn’t affect users.

Mercenaries care about the craft. They focus on the code: architecture, performance, elegant solutions. They will go deep on technical problems whether or not anyone actually needs it solved.

But I am not sure I have this framed right. Does this distinction make sense to you? And more importantly - which one are you?