This is pretty much my current job; leading a team of engineers on projects involving legacy codebases where the original authors are long gone. The first thin

This is pretty much my current job; leading a team of engineers on projects involving legacy codebases where the original authors are long gone. The first thing I always do is treat working software with respect. It's easy to be a HN-commenter-pedant and assume it's all garbage, but context is everything; 9 times out of 10 the code is responsible for a good chunk of our salaries. The second thing I try to do is lower expectations of clients. Often times, non-technical people will be overjoyed to hear that somebody is working on this black box they've been fighting for years, and it's up to you to keep their expectations in check. The third is to fix broken tests, write new ones, and learn to use grep :)