Companies don't hire specialists to refactor code that they're abandoning. Companies do hire specialists to port code that they're not abandoning. Dead compan

Companies don't hire specialists to refactor code that they're abandoning. Companies do hire specialists to port code that they're not abandoning. Dead companies don't hire anyone at all. "Zombie" companies can still have big revenues and they can and do pay consultants to do things like port old applications. Again, there have been entire companies based on such activity. I've made money from such companies. You don't work on rotten code because nobody does I was a consultant for a language vendor for 5 years, then continued working in that niche for another 5. My sample size in this context is in the many dozens at least. There's a lot of code I'd call "rotten" out there that people still work on. I didn't say anything to denigrate maintenance programmers. Good. I'm sure I've met a number of them who are probably better coders then either of us when they're half asleep.