> I'm currently getting my footing now as a contractor. If this is actually something that most programmers don't like to do, is there an angle for me to pitch

> I'm currently getting my footing now as a contractor. If this is actually something that most programmers don't like to do, is there an angle for me to pitch myself as "The guy who will clean up your code base"? Absolutely not. Do not go there. If you love the process of software engineering, the art of refactoring, building good abstractions, etc., then you need to have your own code; your own garden to tend. You cannot just parachute into an ailing codebase to "clean it up"; you need to build the mental theory behind it first, which means deeply understanding the problem being solved. If you are able to do this, you may make lots of changes which genuinely improve the code, and you will be hated for it. Because when you leave, nobody is going to understand why you made all those changes, and they're going to think you're some enterprisey architecture astronaut who just made everything more complicated, even if they're wrong. You've just disconnected their mental models from the codebase and then jumped ship, leaving them with something they can no longer maintain. Now instead of bad mental models matching bad code, then have bad mental models completely divorced of this new "good" code. They're worse off. You cannot just "clean up" a codebase -- keeping a clean codebase takes a long time, a lot of background knowledge, and a lot of care. The best thing you could do would be to improve their own mental models, and guide them in improving their own codebases. But this is a completely different skillset, and I don't know how much money there is there. It requires them to accept your help, which is a big ask.