I think one factor that leads to bloated, ruined software was missed... I don't know how common it is overall, but I have personally seen it ruin several very g

I think one factor that leads to bloated, ruined software was missed... I don't know how common it is overall, but I have personally seen it ruin several very good products. And that is the simple fact that employers want their employees to remain busy. If a piece of software reaches a point of exceptional quality - the developers working on it still have to fill 40 (likely more) hours a week to appease bosses. And so they do the only thing available - they ruin the product. This is one of the reasons that I think software engineers should, in certain cases, work on retainer. Domain knowledge of a specific product is very valuable, and companies routinely ignore this. They will shuffle an engineer off to some newer project and leave a more junior person to handle maintenance of the original project - and that junior person will have to fill their time somehow. This serves no one except for the shortsighted manager who determines their self worth by how many and how much they control their employees.