You have to look at where the bullet holes aren't on surviving planes to know where to reinforce them...
aka you don't maybe think tha - as an outside consultant - the nature of the job means you'd rarely be brought in to fix "beautiful codebases"...?
certainly! but you see so much you stay in the industry long enough. and hear other people’s stories. the most common one - “just got a new gig at ____, wow the codebase is a mess.”
I probably worked with 300-400 SWEs directly and of them there is only one I’d trust to write code if my life depended on it. and I think that is likely in-line with how many SWEs are actually great at their jobs