"2nd: Instead of seeing it as a 'DoS attack on myself by previous developers', I try to see it as a neverending Sudoku that challenges and stimulates and pays m

"2nd: Instead of seeing it as a 'DoS attack on myself by previous developers', I try to see it as a neverending Sudoku that challenges and stimulates and pays me every day." This is how it is for me, I've had a great time with several business systems initiated by amateurs or mediocre developers that took hold and had been going for 5-10 years when I arrived. Yes, the WTF:s are everywhere, changing these systems is really hard and takes a lot of discipline and care, but every time you put something in production you'll also have made other parts of the application better, more robust and faster. To me that is really rewarding, and not even noisy, butterfingered management can stop you from littering the commit log with lovely little improvements that incrementally turns the turd into a much more stable income for them, and possibly yourself (and if not you jump jobs after a while and get the raise then). I don't care whether they appreciate my work, first I care about practicing my craft well, second I care about how it is perceived by my peers in the craft. Of course, this isn't a reason to make crappy software on purpose, but this kind of just happens when you on the cheap test an idea against a market and it flies really well and customers flow in.