? not parent, but I am really surprised by that mindset.
A large part of my career has been telling my boss "we should invest 5h of cleanup time here to make sure that in the future we won't have those 5h worth of obstacles here before building a new feature on top of it".
In industries where requirements change on a weekly or monthly basis, agility is worth a lot.
I completely agree. My bet would be the bosses usually don't. So in a lot of places you need another "excuse" (or as another poster mentioned, spend the time saved to invest more into maintainability but cover it up).
A large part of my career has been telling my boss "we should invest 5h of cleanup time here to make sure that in the future we won't have those 5h worth of obstacles here before building a new feature on top of it".
In industries where requirements change on a weekly or monthly basis, agility is worth a lot.