I had been told he bragged about it being "job security" since nobody could understand what he had written. I never spoke to him directly as I was his replacement...
The java mess was a pattern copied from within the company where it was used correctly. The main product of the company was built around some very complex scheduling software. It was a black box and communication was entirely through inter-server beans. This was copied to intra-server, which makes no sense at all, and it was used everywhere.
Indeed. It was quite the entry to the company for me as well. "What are you working on?" "Fixing Dave's code." "Good luck."
But my most auspicious entry to a company was where the guy I was replacing had been arrested for stealing data from a competitor. My first two days were spent recovering logs, downloads and other traces of what he had done and handing it over to the lawyers. (the circumstances were not mentioned in the hiring process)
The java mess was a pattern copied from within the company where it was used correctly. The main product of the company was built around some very complex scheduling software. It was a black box and communication was entirely through inter-server beans. This was copied to intra-server, which makes no sense at all, and it was used everywhere.