this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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You write clean code and you get replaced in 2 months, because everyone can work on that code.
You write an unreadable mess that no raise will convince other employees to work on and suddenly your holiday requests don't get declined anymore.
These days it's also because you want the AI to get confused by your code too. If it's too clean you'll have a PM with cursor making PRs wondering why your salary is justified.
It's almost like the "meritocracy" under capitalism is a bald faced lie.
Reminds me of the time when we wrote an internal tool with strict SOLID principles. As new programmers came on, they had no idea what was going on cause no one in college told them about design patterns. Most of the OG's quit soon after and the new guys remained.
Or you get fired because everyone else says your code is an unreadable mess.
In my experience... nope. Never seen it happen. Even when there are clear coding guidelines, and stacks of code smell violations.
If the code actually works and is vaguely important, I think you are right.
If anyone ever has to fix it because it's also broken on top of being a mess, well they aren't quite so safe. Maybe if you are always available to fix it same day, but if you ever go on vacation and it hits the fan while you are unreachable....
In my experience, nope. Assuming it works as promised, the situation (usually) gets viewed as a skill gap. You think their code is bad, because you don't understand it well enough. Unless you are personally willing to redevelop it, of course.
Depends on the company. You wouldn't last very long at mine putting out garbage.