If I can open a project and refactor some piece of code to be 1/10th of it's former size, while making it both more readable and more efficient without changing what it does than it's shit. In such cases I honestly don't care how good the original coder was supposed to be or what excuses he has. And yes, if I write code that can be optimized that way, I will be the first to admit that it's shit.
It's easier to refactor something that has already been created than to create that thing. This is why refactoring is such a good thing. It doesn't mean the original creation was "shit", it just means that it was massively improved by refactoring, which is sort of the point.
