[grigjd3]

So if the codebase were good, I would not be assigned to it. However, I always look to fix the following issues:

1) lack of extensibility. This comes from poorly scoped projects. Both previous dev and product manager didn't understand the value in what they were making.

2) built in headaches. This is related to (1) but it's kind of the opposite problem. I see deployment tools that don't make the options object available to read in all contexts, or unhelpful automations, like silent failures. This is often from someone inexperienced trying to be clever.

3) terrible engineering practices - storing prebuilt native binaries in git, deploying a custom (read unsupported) version of a tool like gpg or perl. This can represent just a terrible engineering culture, but I often find these practices can be sourced to someone with a title like Director of Research

4) Lack of scalability - this is the least worrisome thing I run into. It takes experience in big problems to know ahead of time with any accuracy where the bottlenecks will show up. If this were the only problem I ever ran into, I'd be a happy camper.