I know a guy who always says you're not senior until you've had to maintain your own project that's become legacy and I agree. Too many developers serially job-hopping every 18-24 months. They all have experience with other people's legacy code but not their own. They're all happy to build something new but if they don't stick around long enough to see the consequences of their decisions, they're lacking critical experience.
I job hop a bunch and a common theme that I have had in my jobs is to go in and understand the legacy, and bring it up to a more reasonable state. It's been interesting having to be the one dealing with someone else's consequences.
I'll sometimes chat with the people who have had to maintain whatever ground work I had laid, and each time around, I get a little bit better at laying down a framework of infrastructure and operations that's better and better at staying sustainable
