Couldn't agree more about how a poorly designed backend can increase costs, however pretty and well-designed the frontend is. We have a situation at work just

Couldn't agree more about how a poorly designed backend can increase costs, however pretty and well-designed the frontend is. We have a situation at work just like this: the inherited backend code is dreadful, full of WTFs due to poor implementation, lack of knowledge and lack of planning and design. It's eating away our profit margins. New features and customization take far longer than they should, and time estimates are impossible. Bugs, from simple UI stuff to server issues, are numerous and end up adding to customer support costs, not to mention reputation. Do the management understand this ? Nope, they just consider these costs to be the normal cost of doing business in this sector. We have pleaded time and again to rewrite and refactor the code, but never given the time or leeway because the sales team want the latest shiny feature to sell to the client. The irony is that we have a healthy and growing user base and top-rank clients. An outside competitor (of which the developers are aware, but about which the management are oblivious) are about to eat our lunch because they can simply execute better and faster.