Precarious position to be in when you have to clean up after others, and these 'others' are not pro-actively helping you out, or have no incentive to do so.

Every software company - or so it looks from my anecdotal experience - has one of more of these positions. It seems to be more rampant in larger companies or companies carrying a lot of legacy code.

Nonetheless, I've seen this pattern consistently in QA and Rel-Eng groups where the impossible expectation of delivering quality out of incomplete and poorly designed products.

It's also funny that usually the ones building new things - vs fixing / delivering things - are the ones getting the highest compensations.