Upvote for being very honest.

Isn't this what happened throughout the industry? (with a very few exceptions).

This is exactly what makes my belief about "great programmers" just went out of the window: no matter how great an individual is, the fact that plenty software houses have terrible code base show something else.

People can blame the businesses, the time-to-market, the deadline or whatnot and I believe you guys.

But at the same time, are you being fair toward your profession at the same time?

If great programmers do exist, I'm expecting them to change these ugly code bases everywhere to the point where 50% of any companies out there would have good code base (and that includes unit-tests)