Really mature engineers will spend 3 months running a psyop campaign with upper management about the value of removing the stone, 3 months devising a new stoneless architecture, 15 months letting a team of underlings implement it, and a lifetime of failing upwards because they “led large scale projects.”
I like how Sarah Mei says, "Inline everything". You don't get to go on a refactoring crusade. You do it on a daily basis when you are working on the actual production issues. Easy to say but based on my experience, it is the only way to move things in the right direction and keep them that way.
