By height, of course. ;-) Seriously, though, although I think OP overstates it a bit, the point is a good one. When we are paid to code, part of the deal is

By height, of course. ;-) Seriously, though, although I think OP overstates it a bit, the point is a good one. When we are paid to code, part of the deal is that we can be required to produce code that is arbitrarily bad, as judged by our own lights. I've certainly been in situations where I was compelled to commit code, in my own name, that I felt was atrocious. You might argue that I should have resigned instead, but when you have a family things are not that simple. (Yes, I did leave with all practical haste, but at my level this can take a while.) I do judge programmers somewhat by their commits. But I am careful to consider the context, especially parts that might not be immediately obvious. If you see something that looks bad, though, don't just ass. Instead, ask the person about it. What's their opinion of it? What's their opinion of the project as a whole and how it was run? And listen carefully, as standard practice (at least in the US) is to avoid disparaging prior work situations.