> Instead of understanding why things are the way it is, they fantasize about how they can one up original authors and claim their own hero title.

Hell, if they really care about claiming that hero title, why not spend that effort to understand and refactor the parts of the code that were initially hard to deal with. What you wrote above is a distillation of what a "tech bro", "Type-A player", ego-based culture looks like. It is the opposite of true professionalism.