I think the problem is exacerbated by the fact that when engineers get to these new companies, the codebases they walk into look exactly like what they left behind, so they think that's "normal." I do believe that if more engineers started their careers in well-architected codebases, we'd get into a feedback loop where they would walk into a new codebase and insist on cleaning it up as they went, rather than just accepting any old crap that happens to be there. Which would grow more developers with experience of good codebases.

I think what we have now in the industry is the equivalent of what you'd get if most children were raised in poorly-kept houses. They're just used to the mess, so when they get their own houses, it looks like where they were brought up.