'One skeleton crew to maintain the "bad" code in production, and everyone else was allocated to the rewrite.'

My employer is doing this now. I'm on the maintenance side. I am not refactoring it quietly, yet. I am quietly supporting the rewrite team, although I won't get credit for it.

The 'bad' code makes us money today. The new code costs us money today. I doubt it will ever be better enough to pay for its own development. But that does not seem to matter. Mgmt wants to be like google. Mgmt wants a bigger org.

Not much I can do except to keep the money coming in today.