The environment takes a toll on everyone, some more than others. The things I've seen ... you cannot un-see ;)

Yea I don't get why we romanticize working long hours and crunch time / overtime. If they would have worked standard 8 hour days things probably would have gotten better faster. In my opinion, working more than 8 hours a day tells me that you're wasting time.

Yeah, I wonder if anybody has done studies on the psychological damage of developers working on shitty accumulated cruft?

It's definitely a form of mental dissonance.

This is the case across billions of taxpayer dollars worth of IT systems in hundreds of agencies, but many of the contractors don't realize the insanity they generate and the stares they have caused.

The government needs a lot of help. I wish there were more crisis opportunities like this to use as an excuse to hire the right team to build good systems for citizens. Tough to get systems integration above the fold regularly to call attention to the issue.

there is apparently a generational gap here. There are people that have read The Mythical Man-Month, and then there are people that go and re-live it.