This is highly subjective. There is often much more at stake than clean code. On one end if you are shipping source code to an SDK of some sort, the clean code is extremely important, as it is documentation for your users. But, if it's an ancillary system on an internal project, well, sorry, but it probably isn't worth the time cost and risk of introducing new bugs by refactoring. Talk to your boss about it. If they can't articulate the reasons why it's not a good idea to clean up that code, then you should get a different job. Also (self promotion), see: http://www.jdconley.com/blog/archive/2009/01/26/put-down-the...
Comments
This is highly subjective. There is often much more at stake than clean code. On one end if you are shipping source code to an SDK of some sort, the clean code is extremely important, as it is documentation for your users. But, if it's an ancillary system on an internal project, well, sorry, but it probably isn't worth the time cost and risk of introducing new bugs by refactoring. Talk to your boss about it. If they can't articulate the reasons why it's not a good idea to clean up that code, then you should get a different job. Also (self promotion), see: http://www.jdconley.com/blog/archive/2009/01/26/put-down-the...