I recently quit my job for pretty much the same reasons. (I even created an auto build system, too... weird.) I actually faced a professional development dilemma: No forward progress. In an environment like that, where you have 20+ other people who don't care, aren't paying attention, just hack things together... you're not going to make forward progress (professionally, and the business will eventually be burdened with wanted growth and a messy code base, or something will break big-time and cause major loss of revenue). They are and they will continue to be stuck in the muck until someone closer to the top most likely runs into a very hard decision, or looses a great deal of money and has to face up to the reality of how they're building their business. I recommend moving on. There's some positive to be said for being pragmatic (sometimes you just have to hack it). However, if this culture is persistent, it's a BAD culture, especially if they hire inexperienced / unqualified people, and start teaching them these habits / traits (bad ju-ju for everyone, the entire development world, when places operate like this).