Sure, it is everyone's job and they should certainly openly talk about it, but no manager can go and do it for an engineer.
A great engineer can find an incremental value with any refactoring they do: otherwise, they are extremely likely to refactor for the wrong future. I've seen this play out a number of times.
And the root cause is always exactly the same: engineers can't design code for the future that's not here today or at most, tomorrow. When they think they've done it, a new future comes and that code is even harder to refactor because it prematurely catered to cases that never materialized.
But that's exactly why managers need to understand and accept that refactoring is software engineering, and engineers need to do it continuously and keep delivering value while they do it.
And while CTOs, Eng Directors, architects and technical leaders might be "managers" in a sense, to me they are still all engineers, and they are the ones ensuring technical direction enables a healthy project while satisfying business goals.
Non-technical managers are there to bring clarity to business requirements, but they don't need to know exactly how sustainable technical excellence (or at least health) is achieved, the same way engineers don't need to know how user research or user testing that proves something works or not, is performed.
Sure, it is everyone's job and they should certainly openly talk about it, but no manager can go and do it for an engineer.
A great engineer can find an incremental value with any refactoring they do: otherwise, they are extremely likely to refactor for the wrong future. I've seen this play out a number of times.
And the root cause is always exactly the same: engineers can't design code for the future that's not here today or at most, tomorrow. When they think they've done it, a new future comes and that code is even harder to refactor because it prematurely catered to cases that never materialized.
But that's exactly why managers need to understand and accept that refactoring is software engineering, and engineers need to do it continuously and keep delivering value while they do it.
And while CTOs, Eng Directors, architects and technical leaders might be "managers" in a sense, to me they are still all engineers, and they are the ones ensuring technical direction enables a healthy project while satisfying business goals.
Non-technical managers are there to bring clarity to business requirements, but they don't need to know exactly how sustainable technical excellence (or at least health) is achieved, the same way engineers don't need to know how user research or user testing that proves something works or not, is performed.