[dennisgorelik]

> These people protect and maintain the original code

If business depends on robustness of that code - of course they protect it.

> They resist better practices and refactoring

How do you know that they resist "better" practices?

It could be they resist fancy practices that would cause more problems than they would solve.

[lucisferre]

So you just presume I'm exaggerating? On the basis of what exactly?

There is nothing robust about mountains of spaghetti code. If anything these businesses are spending countless dollars paying the interest on the technical debt left here. What's worse is it impacts their long term competitiveness as it resists even incremental improvements. Besides, there is nothing fancy about basic practices like solid design, proper planning or even just the appropriate use of tools for source control and build processes.