“We’ll have time to do it when things slow down.”
This well intended lie about how to do neglected and deferred maintenance work in a technology org is something I’ve experienced at multiple companies. What we’re really saying is, “who ever decides not to spend time resting and enjoying time with their family over the holidays can do something the business as a whole does not value.” You can look at the calendar and say, “see, look, there’s two whole months to get all that debt tech cleaned up!” But subtract off vacation taken around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, and at best you have maybe a week or two were the team is capable of doing productive work at full capacity.
A more honest assessment is that if a business is only willing to devote 4% of the working year to mitigating risk incurred while building critical technology solutions, then it is okay with that risk. Just own it and then go bake cookies and play in the snow.