I'm usually the only one on any team that is willing to sit down with "that tool", written by some guy who left the company years ago (maybe using VBA Excel or Access macros because he wasn't actually a trained programmer), and understand it to the point that I can fix just one piece of it without rewriting the whole thing from scratch.
And then I can recommend ways to wean the company's process away from that sort of fragile dependence on unmaintainable code.
But that kind of work is not for everyone. A lot of the time, people don't even like the smell of the code they wrote themselves only a few months ago, so slogging down in the sewers of the ex-COO's magic Excel spreadsheet would be absolute torture. I see it less like an undercity diver busting up grease clots in the drains, and more like a surgeon carefully and methodically removing colon polyps before they go malignant.
And I am burning out here because I have been explicitly ordered to not fix anything without prior permission. Ordinarily, I would be spending some time every day safely refactoring old code and eliminating dead code. But SLoC is a management metric here. Reducing the total lines of code would upset the applecart.
God... what a horrifying situation. That seems like exactly the opposite of what management should be doing. I get satisfaction when I can refactor copy/paste, unparameterized code with something more concise and easily testable. I hope you find a better place to be soon.
I already have a job, and it pays well enough, so even considering the poor working conditions, I haven't seen any offers that would entice me to leave it. I don't really want to work with professional 3rd-party recruiters, and more than once I have walked away from a company that wanted to start negotiating salary before even inviting me to interview.
If this were San Francisco or Silicon Valley, I would probably be gone by now. But quieter markets seem somewhat less eager to hire anyone with less than exactly five years of experience, and are very reticent about paying anything extra for older prospective employees.
Aside from the job itself, I am getting so, so sick of modern software industry hiring practices. It seems like every person in every HR department is constantly keeping secrets and monitoring possible lines of sight from any hidden lawsuit snipers.
I built the database and web interface for my current workplace 3 years ago. We used Excel as a temporary quick fix for inputting data. Problem is, we are still using it 3 years later. I am constantly cleaning up the mess of crap data being in the database because of this. Its really tedious, and has generated far more work than replacing excel with some proper web form that properly validates the data. I never get a chance to build the web forms, as it will take a week or two to do it properly. Instead I spend my time on tedious boring crap, that I shouldn't have to do, because management doesn't see it as a problem, other than me complaining about it.
If something is boring, there is a good chance it can be automated somewhat.
