People who built terrible broken systems don't know they are bad at building things, and they probably don't have a clear idea of what would be better o

People who built terrible broken systems don't know they are bad at building things, and they probably don't have a clear idea of what would be better or worse to begin with. Sometimes this is true, sometimes not. The early days of a company (or product) can be full of existential threats and rapidly changing requirements. Resources are always limited and dev teams are always stretched beyond their limits. The crappy code you see may be there because it was a literal choice between that duct-tape solution you're looking at, and missing out on some major deal or perhaps even going out of business. Now, yes, the people who built such a rickety system can become obstacles to improvement. But, they are not necessarily incompetent. They may have been forced into making the least-bad decision out of several terrible options, over and over again. Sometimes they're just pretty bad developers though.