I think it’s hard to do refactorings in the context of a product-oriented team that works in sprints of 2 weeks. I have two options: a) either I make the rewrite 5 times in a row… but that would take a lot of time, so management won’t buy it (and I cannot just do it on the side because it actually takes time), or b) I do the rewrite one at a time, but then for every intermediate rewrite I need to open a PR and spend time with my colleagues doing the review. I don’t have anything against about PR reviews, but reviewing intermediate work feels like a waste of time (and kills the fun, because I know where I’m heading to, it’s just not obvious YET how to achieve it, hence the intermediate steps… I don’t really want to answer questions about intermediate work).

On personal projects, it’s a pleasure to rewrite code until I feel it “looks” good.