Understanding unfamiliar legacy code with a bunch of kludges and "domain knowledge" or "business logic" baked into it, when the original authors are uninterested/unavailable and management has
zero respect or understanding for the fact that it often takes an order of magnitude longer to modify/maintain this stuff than it does to write it.
Oh, and there's no test suite.
That is my nightmare. I've been there a few times and it can be literally impossible to shine in that role.
"What do you mean, it will take you ten hours to add a button? They coded this whole module in one week and there are 100 buttons!"
aarrrrgh
Now, as an engineer, I understand and embrace the challenge of explaining this sort of thing to management. I get it. That's the type of skill that separates code monkeys from senior developers and architects. But, no matter how good you are, you can't force management to listen nor understand.
Oh, and there's no test suite.
That is my nightmare. I've been there a few times and it can be literally impossible to shine in that role.
"What do you mean, it will take you ten hours to add a button? They coded this whole module in one week and there are 100 buttons!"
aarrrrgh
Now, as an engineer, I understand and embrace the challenge of explaining this sort of thing to management. I get it. That's the type of skill that separates code monkeys from senior developers and architects. But, no matter how good you are, you can't force management to listen nor understand.