Nothing to maintain because all the overengineered projects got canceled.

I'm numb to it. It's just a fact of life because tenures are so short, quality is often very opinionated, and jobs are readily available, and you usually get a raise from the next job too. You do what you can to stay employed until you can get the next job lined up.

It has become overwhelmingly obvious that the industry is never going to reach a state where technical debt and bad code is exceptional and high quality is the norm. If there is a maximum amount of pessimism I could have, it would be for this.

I had only one job so far where code quality was a primary objective it was fantastic, but it was also extremely slow and expensive. Slower and more expensive even than what you're probably thinking right now. I was shocked.