> Go fast and break things has been a mantra for how long?

Practically since eternity, but just as we learnt to manage current rate of "fast" and "breakage", somebody attached a solid booster behind us. So we're trying to understand what happened and what's happening and what will happen.

> I think a lot of the laments about "good" code are really about "ownership"

People owning what they did, have responsibility and initiative about doing better is always a good thing, yes.

> and as someone who spent most of my working career in OTHER peoples code bases I have seen some things.

I can understand that, I'm sorry you had to go through this.

> There are a lot of you who think that your code bases are "great" when they are NOT. Personal understanding is not a good measure of quality.

My codebases are as great as my knowledge. I love when someone reads my code and points where I f'ed up. I also love to show what I did has achieved something I was aiming for and discuss how to achieve it betterer.

> The system is designed to reward heroes who fix problems...

And this is the problem. Because I work silently and diligently build something looking unimpressive while working like an atomic clock without any problems.