... Desire to be regarded as fast. ... I assume you work with sprints and some points have been assigned to some user story. In my opinion it's good to general

... Desire to be regarded as fast. ... I assume you work with sprints and some points have been assigned to some user story. In my opinion it's good to generally first find the quickest solution that gives the expected result and then, if time is left, improve the code quality. If there is not enough time to properly finish a feature (i.e.: write good quality code), with good quality code, add a user story in the back log that explains the refactoring to be needed. I guess in general this is also the way to go when you see other code, unrelated to the feature you are working on, that needs some major refactoring. Because at the end of the sprint you still want your own user stories completed. You need your PM to understand the need for the refactoring, so you can dedicate the right amount of time and it gets a high enough priority in the backlog (some PM's might only want to focus on new features).