I always did like that guy. I know you are surprised, he is a Republican. But I, unlike many, am a professional, objective person, a coldhearted scientist even, and Drezner is a good academic. Now, he says:
…your dissertation will follow you the rest of your life. Don’t think you can just grind one out barely above the bar and it won’t matter.
He is right and he is one of the only major people I have heard say this. Everyone else says to do the minimum. Quality does not matter, finishing does. You will not get a job anyway, people will not read it anyway, the most important thing is to finish in time so you will at least have the degree.
As I say, I truly dislike people who go on like that. They are very destructive. Just so as to extirpate them from the face of the earth and save one more person from listening to the inane bleating cited above, I could do them some serious violence; the only reason I do not do is that it is beneath me to touch them.
I think the least they could do is relinquish their degrees in shame and penitence for the damage they have done to so many. But they never will, because they are sanctimonious and self-absorbed, and they lack the intelligence they would need to realize that some people are capable of more than the minimum.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
A guy from Spain just asked me for a copy of my first book, virtually unchanged from dissertation. I stand by the idea of my dissertation, and am fact am still working on them (for 5th book).
You see what I mean, I know; ya lo has dicho.
Depends. Maybe in science it doesn’t matter so much. My husband’s dissertation was in a different field from the one he eventually entered. He immediately started publishing in Physical Review Letters and elsewhere when he got into liquid crystal science. He already had a good reputation two years out of grad school, which he has maintained all these years.
But also he did not stay in the academic world. He was not engaged in that particular kind of battle for prestige but instead was working for companies that were developing products and were results oriented. Which is what he is still doing, as a matter of fact.
We are not saying you have to stay in the field of your dissertation — we’re discussing the fallacy that its quality does not matter.
Maybe it is from scientists going into industry that the idea comes, your dissertation does not matter, just get the credential so you can move on. That does not mean they are asked to abandon confidence in themselves, though, which is the topic of this post.
We are talking about the way in which advice to students and new faculty on getting things done overlaps with advice that presupposes one would not be able to do anything good, anyway.