It's a game of incentives. I might enjoy making systems cleaner and more maintainable but if the incentives for my next promotion are "lead new large scale pro

It's a game of incentives. I might enjoy making systems cleaner and more maintainable but if the incentives for my next promotion are "lead new large scale project to ship something a few times and maybe you can get a promo", why bother? It's probably one of the worst parts of large-ish organizations