When a Colleague's Mistakes Affect You

There's one more case OP doesn't mention that affects many of us programmers...

The colleague whose mistakes affect you most is long gone.

I do a lot of work that depends upon those who preceded me. I may "borrow" their code to avoid reinventing the wheel, I may need their libraries, I may have to modify their app, and of course, I may just have to fix their bugs.

So I have to add to my project: understanding their code, refactoring it as needed, rewriting gross violations of standards (and common sense), or just cleaning it up in order to build upon it.

Management doesn't want to hear about our problems with the pre-existing code base. But they are very real, sometimes doubling or tripling the resources needed even for the simplest projects.

The best way I have found to handle this is to always do what I think is the best thing in the long run, lay it out clearly, and make it clear why we'd all be better off in the long run. This is not always automatic or obvious.