"But this time the stench made me finally address the issue, something I should have done long before.
"Let me take a step back and provide some history as to how this situation came to a head. Tim was one of the most liked developers in the company. He had been there from the beginning, one of the first few employees to take the risk and successfully launch the company.
"Tim wrote much of the code for the original product and his code was still present years later. His code was legendary. But if you have ever had to troubleshoot or build upon the original code that was created in a startup, you understand that "legendary" doesn't always mean quality.
"Some of the code was extremely innovative and some of it was a mess. And come to think of it, this was what life was like working with Tim."
