You write crappy code to meet unrealistic deadlines, you get promoted, hand off shitty code to someone else who is viewed as a low performer because they were too busy writing good code.<p>It&#x27;s not actually that clear cut (it&#x27;s more like an average performers who write shitty code quickly will be rewarded over an average performer writing solid code less quickly), but code quality isn&#x27;t legible to management and HR, who control resource allocation. Even a line manager knowledgeable about the code base has incentives to lead a team that produces shitty code now instead of good code later.