And so is jaywalking, buying beer at 20 years old in the USA, and many other stupid things as shown here https://www.rd.com/funny-stuff... . Big fucking deal. Civil disobedience, man. Think of it this way: 1) You won't get caught. The company interviewing you most certainly won't tell the other company that you shared code, and as long as you just show it to the interviewer on your own machine (not give them a file with the code) it won't escape into the wild, so you have nothing to worry about. 2) True, the company you are interviewing for many get a few ideas from what you showed them. But regardless, they would have to code it themselves (see point 1), and secondly, if the original company had management issues like that, it's almost their karma for treating their employees like that (should have trusted them more, in which case they would have stayed and not shared code).

Nothing says you can't share that. I think many hiring managers would understand that sometimes clueless coworkers or especially bad management decisions get in the way of producing quality code. Ignore the front end code unless asked about it. If questioned about it, just mention that bean counters higher up meddled with it/forced you to code like that (also shows you obey management, which is a plus for getting hired lol)