As others have hinted, the best path to better code is 1) have a good test suite and test coverage to ensure that any code refactoring hasn’t broken other or e

As others have hinted, the best path to better code is 1) have a good test suite and test coverage to ensure that any code refactoring hasn’t broken other or expected functionality 2) spend the time to rethink the design of some piece and refactor that, deploy and watch for unexpected bugs 3) repeat until the code is up to date The problem is nontechnical management that doesn’t even understand why it’s important to revisit old code in this way instead of constantly coming out with new features. It is just seen as an unnecessary cost, even though the crufty state of the code has been slowing the whole team down. (Disclaimer: I have been in this exact situation. The founders ended up selling out and leaving.)