Reading code is more difficult then writing code. Understanding a complex system is difficult -- understanding a complex system with poor architecture is nearly

Reading code is more difficult then writing code. Understanding a complex system is difficult -- understanding a complex system with poor architecture is nearly impossible. If anyone is bidding on the work without looking at your code first, that's a good sign they're someone to avoid. If someone had a large project they wanted modified, I'd expect to spend a few hours with the code before agreeing to work. If it was really awful, I'd probably turn down the job. Very few good programmers are looking for jobs. When you say "bad reference online" it makes me wonder if you're hiring from a site like odesk ... and those sites are generally programmers scraping the bottom. If I drew the wrong conclusion from that comment I apologize.