Rather than follow suit, he went in the opposite direction and did what no one else wanted to do… he started a septic tank cleaning company. He said that it was hard work, but lucrative… and that after a while, he woke up one morning and realized that he was passionate about other people’s shit.
AI and crypto are very cool right now. They'll change the world and make some people billions.
But I bet you'll on average have a better career working on sewage plant management software :)
You’re right that there are very few books available showing people how to do this. Usually “Working Effectively with Legacy Code” is recommended but it’s just one book and so can’t cover everything. It’s an area where on the job training and experience definitely makes a difference.
But I don't think I've read any books on that. What I do is read the code!
I think can do this mostly because I'm interested in it. SW projects die because the code isn't maintained properly and becomes unworkable. So I work on being the counterforce to that, keeping the project alive.
Most engineers are into writing new shiny code, and hate "cleaning up other's mistakes". That's also often rewarded. The results are well known :)