> Clean-slate rewrites are some of my favorite best projects, and I hate dealing with legacy junk - but there's just not budget to keep everything brand new all the time.

Hey, I get it.

The thing is, budget is largely artificial. Unless a company is on the brink of bankruptcy, there can be budget (but the company has to eat that from profits).

The thing is, eating budget for maintenance and system upgrades is a known playbook companies use. That doesn't make it right though.

That is why i wrote that the issue is organizational, not technical...