I think that a lot of the motive in this direction is unconscious. It's less "Oh boy, they'll realize we aren't doing anything if we don't say we need to rewrit

I think that a lot of the motive in this direction is unconscious. It's less "Oh boy, they'll realize we aren't doing anything if we don't say we need to rewrite something", and more, "This will be an interesting way to spend my time and keep myself busy for a while." This is the same impulse, just vocalized differently. If the incentive structure was changed, devs may rather think "I need to make this as tight, small, and maintainable as possible, so that I can spend the rest of my time on the beach." We see this a lot more on side projects specifically because the dev knows and respects that the available resources are constrained, as the parent poster mentions. In any case, people usually won't allow it to reach the inflection point where they're visibly non-productive and the boss is cognizant of the option to "clear the shop". There are always tweaks, defects and flaws that can be made up and justified. The question is whether that work is really contributing useful value. Once a project reaches a certain level of maturity, this becomes increasingly dubious.