>> But often they get stuck on fixing whatever the most recent thing that bothered them about our code rather than on what actually impacts customers in the long or short term.

One company had a homegrown debug protocol and tool to interface with it. I needed to add some custom info screens for development, but it was very hard to add because the code was $h!t. So I started fixing it just to be able to add my new data. Not only was I told that Work should be "managed" and prioritized, it was later discarded even though I had done it.

When programmers do things to "make the code better", it may not have an impact on today's customer demands, but it is meant to make the programmers more efficient in the future. This is stuff that will - by definition - Never be a priority in management's eyes.