Just to offer a different opinion here: I think happiness at work is the most important thing for me personally, and I have no patience for legacy codebases that look like shit.
I mean, you are offering good advice for a person that wants to fit in as his highest priority, no doubt about that. But there are people (like me) who don't enjoy working deep down in complicated shitty code to the degree that I don't even want to be a programmer in such environments.
There are ways to mitigate this. Join companies that care about clean code and micro services. Work in the cloud. Avoid enterprise. Those advices can be hugely important for someone who just hates those kind of gigs where you feel like you don't want to be there even.
I mean, you are offering good advice for a person that wants to fit in as his highest priority, no doubt about that. But there are people (like me) who don't enjoy working deep down in complicated shitty code to the degree that I don't even want to be a programmer in such environments.
There are ways to mitigate this. Join companies that care about clean code and micro services. Work in the cloud. Avoid enterprise. Those advices can be hugely important for someone who just hates those kind of gigs where you feel like you don't want to be there even.