Expensive because, under deadlines, it's a bit of a nightmare to have to twist your mind into all these shapes (and shatter a few times because your first coupl

Expensive because, under deadlines, it's a bit of a nightmare to have to twist your mind into all these shapes (and shatter a few times because your first couple passes of understanding are going to go so right until they go so wrong) until whatever you're reverse engineering finally clicks. It's even better when you feel you're just at the cusp of delivering a new feature on top of what you reverse engineered, and you realize you're missing a skill and have to level up your knowledge to inside of a couple days (oh, and dont forget the times when you think you've learned just enough of that skill to deliver and realize you need to explore an entire subfield of that skill to truly deliver). I've delivered every single time, but I can't do this shit more than a few times a year; I don't say this lightly: it's fucking unhealthy..