> Bad code will make your programmers groan and occasionally threaten to quit, but it usually won't threaten the existence of an organization.

You're joking, right?

I have seen companies be "eclipsed by a faster, nimbler competitor" because they have a crappy codebase.

The reason for the implosions were that, "during the growth & competition phase of the industry," they could not grow because new developers really could not ramp up on the crappy, woefully-undocumented codebases, whilst clients left for less-buggy products that were adding new features.