Rewarding Quality

Read a blog about The cost of (not) testing software

It was not a new idea, by now everyone must know the theory that the later in the lifecyle a bug is discovered the costlier it is to fix

What did get me thinking was one of the comments to the post where the question was raised about companies not rewarding and recognising employees who find and fix the defects at an early stage.

I'm sure all testers know the about-to-ship squeeze with late night and weekend bug blitzes and fixes and managers buying in pizza for the testers.
If a defect does slip out to a customer then there's the chance to be a hero and either find a workaround or come up with a bug fix and patch

Does anyone get rewarded for finding the defects early ?
Do all companies wait until the end to do the big push to get the defects found and cleared ?