90% of developers think they're better than 90% of developers, but it's just an ego trip. Chances are, people have just had to compromise on design due to pressures from within the organisation. Or, as is often the case, they completed the exploratory coding phase of a new feature and the manager shipped it before they could refactor.
This so much. You talk with product managers etc about a new feature that could revolutionize a certain portion of your product so you start hacking away to get an alpha. The alpha is shown to some of the sales people and higher ups who start frothing at the mouth to put it into customers hands. The PM then says we need to ship this ASAP and into production goes code that was just feeling out whether or not the feature was even possible to begin with. Add a couple of months of no major refactor but tons of bug fixes plus additional features and you end up in a really fun place :]
