"Fred long ago learned that refactoring tickets always mysteriously sink to the bottom of the backlog, so he doesn't make them anymore."
Exactly this. Maybe Fred understands that if he creates a ticket to do a required refactor then it will never get prioritized and when things blow up in production 2 months from now it's his phone that's going to ring in the middle of the night.
Fred knows the codebase so well he has a list of functionality he wants to rewrite. He patiently waits until a ticket comes up in the backlog that touches that code.
Exactly this. Maybe Fred understands that if he creates a ticket to do a required refactor then it will never get prioritized and when things blow up in production 2 months from now it's his phone that's going to ring in the middle of the night.