I once took over some work that was previously the domain of our most highly paid ($150-200k a year) "architect"/contractor. Imagine my surprise when I actually examined his code and realized that it looked like it had been written by a student in an intro-level C101 class. At one point, I asked him what his approach to program design was...he replied "brute force and ignorance" and walked away laughing. We fired him shortly thereafter.