That said, despite the frustration, I do try to hold myself accountable for writing clear and concise code as much as I possibly can and off-setting the times when I have to commit some clever hack with long-form narrative style comments.
The thing I care about is if it's a deliberate decision made with consideration of the rest of the business of if it's driven by fear/reactionary/habit.
The former usually means that you'll try and budget in time after the crisis to fix it up, the latter tends to spiral into a complete mess that no one wants to touch after a certain amount of time has passed.
My cousin just went from being an intern at Tesla to a FTE. This group change entailed going from 11-12 hour days to 9-10 hour days. It's crazy and maybe not for everyone but he's happy there.
I work at a more chill company, but sometimes there's something I want to do on the company code base that is not asked for by any stakeholders. I'm happy to occasionally put in an extra 10% to do something that scratches my own itch. I don't see much difference between this and someone who goes home and works in their garden or plays with Arduino or tinkers on an old car.
Working overtime to clean up other peoples' mess that nobody else cares about cleaning up? Hard no.
If it floats your boat, if it's a hobby to you, if you want to spend your free time on it, then sure, knock yourself out. Have fun. Feeling like you have to? No.
Maybe what I learned from it alone would be worth the effort. Tough to say.
This is on top of the "never work for free" rule. All that does is bring down the value and respect of our entire industry.
