Hell, even incompetent looking code (like managing shared resources poorly) can often be explained by a small script done by an amateur turning into a side business and then a full fledged company. Experience and knowledge of an industry beyond software is often many times more valuable than the knowledge of parallel programming. It doesn't mean the code wasn't valuable or good enough at the time, it just no longer meets the rigor and demands, that's why you're employed to work on it. To call everything shitty thats's below your own standards, level of education and experience is a naive view of how software actually exists in the world. Especially when the standard advice given to "idea people" is to learn to code their idea themselves.