I don't know. When you're trying to build a team in a market where there are more jobs than qualified applicants, telling them that you have to 'rescue' an app

I don't know. When you're trying to build a team in a market where there are more jobs than qualified applicants, telling them that you have to 'rescue' an app is a turn off and won't get you anywhere. Also, when the real value within the app is a simple product, breaking it out and re-engineering based on what you've learnt takes about roughly the same time as it does to walk through the code line-by-line and add in valuable tests. Refactoring legacy code by multiple vendors is always a risky proposition (and much much harder to sell to clients who want a deadline for delivery).