The secret is just to do it anyway. I have yet to work in a job where anyone actively stopped me fixing technical debt, even if they never asked me to do it.

It is. Source: We've had the same issues for years, but never get any time allotted to fix them.

Yeah, that's probably more the issue. We've seen too many times throwaway code become production code because "it works already, we need to move forward".

I don't care what your fancy RAMrod doohickeys say Johnson! We need that system up tomorrow so we can reach our quarterly earning projections for the shareholder's meeting!

It’s hilarious when the identified problems come back around to bite the organization, when the priorities have been to work on poorly specc’d features instead.