Why do you think manager didn’t push his team under pressure deliberately? Or more likely because there wasn't any other viable option at the moment except inventing a time machine and travel back in time to prevent that bad decision that caused such situation.
I like your hoisting of the problem from engineering to management level, but I don't see a reason not to keep calling it a "technical debt". Everyone understands the term and the substance remains the same - the code is technically bad and it is causing technical problems because someone decided not to solve them in advance in exchange for some quick wins. You're just blaming other kind of people for creating it.
Remote developer with 20+ years of experience. Mostly worked with PHP and with a passion for REST APIs and front-end interfaces, UX and DX - consequentially working also with React and Svelte.
Location
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Education
Universidade Estácio de Sá / Dalhousie University
Work
Remote full-stack developer @ eHungry; past Toptal freelancer
I understood the article as a bit of an exaggerated story against using "tech debt" as an umbrella term. It does fit a bunch of scenarios, but it's more meaningful if we start using more specific expressions for other cases which were not simply to "borrow time".
You're right that managers often don't have better options because they're usually caught in their own cascade of impossible constraints. The VP needs numbers for the board, the board needs metrics for investors, and nobody in that chain is getting the time or resources they actually need either.
But here's why I still think the term matters:
"Technical debt" frames the problem as a moral failing that needs to be "paid back." It carries all this baggage about borrowed money and responsibility and whose fault it is. When you say "we have technical debt," leadership hears "the engineers screwed up" even if that's not what you mean.
Compare that to saying: "We optimized for speed in Q2 to hit our fundraising milestone. That bought us 18 months of runway. Now we need to allocate 3 engineer-months to address the maintenance costs of those decisions."
Same situation. Totally different framing. One sounds like accountability and planning. The other sounds like blame and cleanup.
The substance isn't quite the same because the metaphor shapes how we think about solutions. "Debt" implies you should pay it back ASAP and feel bad about having it. "Maintenance cost" implies you should budget for it as a normal part of doing business.
You're right that I'm just shifting blame up the chain, but my real point is we should stop playing the blame game entirely. The system creates these pressures. What we need is honesty about trade-offs and realistic budgeting for consequences, not finger pointing about who "borrowed" what.
Though I'll admit: if everyone's going to keep saying "technical debt" anyway (and they will), then yeah, at minimum we should all be honest about what created it instead of pretending it materialized out of thin air.
If they hear "engineers screwed up" when you say "tech debt" that's on the person presenting it. Not the leadership and not term.
The idea that it is "money that needs to be paid back" is correct! At some point, someone (a dev or other) decided to borrow against the future for the sake of simplicity (or familiarity) right now. And when you start having problems, that is the debt coming due.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Why do you think manager didn’t push his team under pressure deliberately? Or more likely because there wasn't any other viable option at the moment except inventing a time machine and travel back in time to prevent that bad decision that caused such situation.
I like your hoisting of the problem from engineering to management level, but I don't see a reason not to keep calling it a "technical debt". Everyone understands the term and the substance remains the same - the code is technically bad and it is causing technical problems because someone decided not to solve them in advance in exchange for some quick wins. You're just blaming other kind of people for creating it.
I came here to say something like this! Thank you!
Tech debt is a useful term that this writer has had weaponized against them too often.
I understood the article as a bit of an exaggerated story against using "tech debt" as an umbrella term. It does fit a bunch of scenarios, but it's more meaningful if we start using more specific expressions for other cases which were not simply to "borrow time".
You're right that managers often don't have better options because they're usually caught in their own cascade of impossible constraints. The VP needs numbers for the board, the board needs metrics for investors, and nobody in that chain is getting the time or resources they actually need either.
But here's why I still think the term matters:
"Technical debt" frames the problem as a moral failing that needs to be "paid back." It carries all this baggage about borrowed money and responsibility and whose fault it is. When you say "we have technical debt," leadership hears "the engineers screwed up" even if that's not what you mean.
Compare that to saying: "We optimized for speed in Q2 to hit our fundraising milestone. That bought us 18 months of runway. Now we need to allocate 3 engineer-months to address the maintenance costs of those decisions."
Same situation. Totally different framing. One sounds like accountability and planning. The other sounds like blame and cleanup.
The substance isn't quite the same because the metaphor shapes how we think about solutions. "Debt" implies you should pay it back ASAP and feel bad about having it. "Maintenance cost" implies you should budget for it as a normal part of doing business.
You're right that I'm just shifting blame up the chain, but my real point is we should stop playing the blame game entirely. The system creates these pressures. What we need is honesty about trade-offs and realistic budgeting for consequences, not finger pointing about who "borrowed" what.
Though I'll admit: if everyone's going to keep saying "technical debt" anyway (and they will), then yeah, at minimum we should all be honest about what created it instead of pretending it materialized out of thin air.
If they hear "engineers screwed up" when you say "tech debt" that's on the person presenting it. Not the leadership and not term.
The idea that it is "money that needs to be paid back" is correct! At some point, someone (a dev or other) decided to borrow against the future for the sake of simplicity (or familiarity) right now. And when you start having problems, that is the debt coming due.