As a junior programmer in the contracting world, I ask the same as it is also a business question. You do not want to create so much extra work in the process of refactoring that you wind up losing money or running out of time before creating what the client asked for. Asking the super (who is also tech savvy) allows him to worry about balancing the business with the needs of his code base.
I would submit that being a junior programmer in the contracting world is a nontrivial part of the problem. Contracting relies on a lot of really bad incentives that I personally suspect are largely antithetical to good practice.
