Refactoring should not be a separate task that a boss can deny. You need to do feature X, feature X benefits from reworking some abstraction a bit, then you rework that abstraction before starting on feature X. And then maybe refactor a bit more after feature X now you know what it looks like. None of that should take substantially longer, and saves vast amounts of time later on if you don't include it as part of the feature work.

You can occasionally squeeze in a feature without reworking things first if time for something is tight, but you will run into problems if you do this too often and start thinking refactoring is a separate task to feature work.

So true! That's why I never use 'the R word'.

Instead, I use synonyms:

• performance tuning
• proactive maintenance
• fixed a subtle bug
• fixed a failing test
• corrected a CI/CD failure

CI/CD failure is my favorite, because technically our CI/CD enforces a code review, so technically "we don't like how this is written" counts as a CI/CD failure.