"It always comes down to trust - how can I make sure that if I work with you, you're going to commit code that I won't have to do a ton of cleanup on?" - This is what I have the issue with - it's generally the difficult clients who won't trust you and have a general arrogance where they believe they are generally entitled to judge before you have written a single line of code. If you are going to have this attitude, try not to get hurt feelings when someone points out your shortcomings.