This is because you are looking at startups. These are products that no one is sure will work, and the company is trying to get a product to market as quickly

This is because you are looking at startups. These are products that no one is sure will work, and the company is trying to get a product to market as quickly and cheaply as possible. The codebase doesn't have to look great and the product doesn't have to be perfect. The question is: is there a market for this thing? Why pay more than you have to just to get the MVP out the door? This isn't cynical, this is how it works. Once the product is proven, then you can bring in a second group of people to take it from V1 -> V2. Since this is HN, no one really talks about what happens once a company moves beyond startup, but there is a second market of developers that are brought in once a product is proven and needs to reach the next level of maturation. A lot of people reading this post are in this market right now: there are companies which you can hire that will help you re-architect your code, architecture, development process, devops, etc. It used to be a lot harder to get a job at a company as an unproven developer. Now there are a lot more options. If you have a lot of experience and you are thinking of entering the startup market, you should look at starting your own company.