I think it's more of a correlation not causation thing :) All else equal, the company with the better codebase will be more competitive/make more money. But a

I think it's more of a correlation not causation thing :) All else equal, the company with the better codebase will be more competitive/make more money. But at the same time it's just true that for most companies code quality and technical excellence are not core qualities of their culture. A lot of companies say that it is, but they don't live it... Or the original founder/technical team don't really have the chops to enforce that quality and make it a core element of the business. Of course that doesn't meant they're not smart. I've known a huge number of highly intelligent people that don't care about code quality, or the future human reader. Needs to become embedded in culture of the org for it to trickle down and become lived in practice.