Bad sign if nobody can comprehend one's code? [duplicate]

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• How can I tactfully suggest improvements to others' badly designed code during review? 15 answers

If a coder writes code that nobody other than he can understand, and code reviews always end with the reviewer scratching his head or holding their head in their hands, is this a clear sign that the coder is simply not cut-out for professional programming? Would this be enough to warrant a career change? How important is comprehensible code in this industry?

Consider these C examples, compare:

if (b)
  return 42;
else
  return 7;

versus:

return (b * 42) | (~(b - 1) * 7);

Is there ever an excuse to employ the latter example? if so, when and why?

EDIT: Leaving the original latter snippet for consideration, adding a correction:

return (b * 42) | ((b - 1) & 7);

I think the other interesting observation is that it requires that b is 1 for true and 0 for false, any other values would render strange results.