[hansvm]

NDAs tend to be pretty invasive (they can sue at your expense whenever, you're presumed guilty if any of your IP looks like theirs no matter how novel it actually is, ...). Those clauses might not be used often, but if not then why include them in the contract?

With such a high potential cost, you'd want to buy something important. I don't think code quality matters that much. It's probably crap, it's probably fixable, and you'll probably get accolades for tracking down thorny issues and for sweeping changes that make it better. If you accidentally hit upon a company not using version control and not willing to change then in such rare cases you can grab another job in a couple weeks.

Unless some extraordinary scenario applies where you need each prospective job to have as high of a chance of success as possible (H1B quasi-slavery and whatnot), I don't think I'd bother even asking about code health.

[ozim]

Second up this post as it is basically what I started writing.

Want to add that one is signing NDA with a company - fun part is you never know who buys that company later so it might be nice people now and in a year some shady law firm takes over or some owner goes under and thinks up shady ways to earn something.