certainly! but you see so much you stay in the industry long enough. and hear other people’s stories. the most common one - “just got a new gig at ____, wow the codebase is a mess.”
I probably worked with 300-400 SWEs directly and of them there is only one I’d trust to write code if my life depended on it. and I think that is likely in-line with how many SWEs are actually great at their jobs
aka you don't maybe think tha - as an outside consultant - the nature of the job means you'd rarely be brought in to fix "beautiful codebases"...?