I think you'll see the same thing wherever people have complex problems and they consult people with an individual profit motive. Car repair, for example. Or al

I think you'll see the same thing wherever people have complex problems and they consult people with an individual profit motive. Car repair, for example. Or alternative "medicine" things like chiropractors. Some of the people will be legit. Some will be frauds. And in the middle you have a bunch of people who don't intend to be frauds but that just hill-climb their way to good businesses but aren't skilled and disciplined enough to measure the value of their interventions. I suspect the same is true of people getting contract development done. Given the number of horror stories I've heard and the number of terrible code bases I've had to clean up, I'd guess the custom-software industry is no better than dentistry or car repair.