I guess I have been lucky - I've always been able to negotiate for time to refactor if needed, or just find time for it in lulls between tasks. If you're in an

I guess I have been lucky - I've always been able to negotiate for time to refactor if needed, or just find time for it in lulls between tasks. If you're in an environment where engineers don't have the freedom to improve their codebase I would not consider that to be a healthy practice, but that certainly would change the value proposition around upfront design.