> now you have to be careful how and when you use the term "refactor" because the people who ought to be supportive hear "wasting time".

Programmers had a hand in this, sadly: https://martinfowler.com/bliki/RefactoringMalapropism.html

Nowadays people throw the term "refactoring" around quite loosely, usually meaning "rewrite" when that was not at all the original meaning of the term!

A little bit like how "vibe coding" quickly went from one definition to another even though people should have known better.