Usually companies like this can fail for a very long time. As long as someone is willing to pay, you can live with the slow development speed, the high number of bugs and the constant team changes.

this exactly. I expect they are paying below average wages, have huge churn of people looking for anything to do while the perfect job arises. Throw in some people new to the area who need a job now, some old contractors who have money and are looking for pocket money and more stability (who's CVs are amazing, they have the gift of the gab but get bored really really quickly and just don't care about the job) and that is a the instant recipe for churn and crap code.

...which indicates that they aren't necessarily wrong in their assessment that those things aren't important.

It makes me wish the OP had named the industry & market, though. Companies like these are ideal prey for entrepreneurs.

Agreed

Yeah it did feel like a very abrupt stop. Hopefully there is a part 2 at some point. How does the consultant deal with communicating the real problem? She must, at some point, tell the executive team "the code is just the symptom." How do they deal with that? And is there a way to empower developers to do this themselves?

I agree. This felt like the first 25% of an essay, actually. Would love to read more from this author.

+1 Some great writing but I was also disappointed with the lack of a conclusion.

It's cool to note that even in the valley things are FUBAR'd. I'm a UK contractor still waiting to wander on to that magical project that functions coherently. Maybe I never will!?

I've outlined a blog post series about 30 headings long starting with this at the premise. There is a significant territory to cover, and it's difficult to present coherently.

The top-level topic is quality, in fact.