[zzzeek]

everyone's worked in companies like this. did you try formulating very specific, actionable migration plans at any of these jobs? It's one thing to say, "this is stupid! we should use XYZ" and expect everyone to say "wow! you're right, we'll do that right away", and another (quite another) to actually formulate the superior architecture concretely, break it into digestible migration steps, sell the organization on if not the whole architecture at once, then at least on the first several migration steps, and to guide the organization into that new architecture for real.

obviously this is more or less possible given specific organizations and personalities at said organizations. my point is more that the magnitude of the task of migrating the ossified organization to a better architecture, even with a fully pliant staff totally on board with changing, should not be underestimated.