I kind of guessed a different situation, where a small development team has asked repeatedly for more staff, since they were not making acceptable progress. Own

I kind of guessed a different situation, where a small development team has asked repeatedly for more staff, since they were not making acceptable progress. Owner balks for months because maybe money is tight, but finally relents. Says 'you can add someone, but we can only pay 30K.' Devs probably thought they could at least unload some gruntwork onto the new person and free up time to accelerate development. This was a small business with a late product. Probably circling the drain, and not much cash flow to play with. The only way an owner would approve a rewrite suggested by his most junior dev with only a few weeks on the job, is out of pure desperation.