[diego_moita]

No, I was not trolling. The key to understand the whole thing is that it was not a software company, but a construction company and I was there as a consultant.

For them, software is a cost, not a source of revenue. That's why they didn't implement rigorous practices such as code reviews. That's why they'd prefer the cheaper against the better coders. That's why I already followed your 3rd advice.

[jimbokun]

It's hard for me to think of a good reason why a construction company should be writing custom software, instead of buying something off the shelf.

[clavalle]

For the same reason any other large enterprise does...so many special cases in their organically grown 'systems' that it would be cheaper to get something custom coded than try to shoehorn their process into an off the shelf environment.