If someone's good at running and marketing a large business, it doesn't necessarily mean that they do good work, and may mean that they know how to maximise profits by cutting corners whenever they can. That's not always the case, but it seems to be pretty typical.
Instead, look for the small guy who may not have a website and drives a plain van. I work for my dad, and that describes him to a tee, as well as most of the other tradesmen on the jobs we do. My dad doesn't even have a company name, nor business cards. He gets all of his work either through a few regular builders, or by word of mouth from previous customers, and is definitely not a business-man. He started carpentry with his dad after he finished high school, and just slowly grew from there. For most of his life he worked alone, but as they grew older, all of my brothers at one point worked for him full-time (it's just me now, and I'm part-time).
If you do find a potential tradesman, just ask him (or her) how he does certain aspects of the job (ex. baseboard inside corners should always be coped, never mitred), and make it clear that you expect high quality work. If he asks for significant payment up-front for anything other than materials, walk away. Better yet, supply all the materials yourself, and pay a proportion of the job each day or week until it's done. One more factor to consider is price. We charge more than the typical carpenter, but not exorbitantly more. If the price seems too good to be true, it probably is.
I've also found this to be true for auto mechanics. The run-down looking shop is more trustworthy and does better work for a better price than the highly polished franchises.
Some people's way of dealing with that is to just not get too attached to their code.
I'm not saying that all code is short-lived. Most developers I know deal with at least some code that's been around since dirt. But there is also a fair amount that gets left behind rather quickly, and neither of those scenarios necessarily has anything to do with the quality of the code nor the suitableness of it to the task at hand.
Not to mention that most of us have had projects we put a lot of effort into, that fulfilled the requirements, and was done on time, only to have it rarely ever (and sometimes never) used by the people who asked for it.
I think it's possible to either care too much about your code (in the sense that you often have no control over what's done with it in the long run, and you need to be able to accept that), or to care too little about it (if you're going to bother writing it, at least try to as good a job as you can under the circumstances).