TLDR · PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE

DON'T FIX IT JUST BECAUSE IT'S TECHNICAL DEBT

blog.danslimmon.com2 min read

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Technical debt is when developers make a decision to borrow against their future productivity in order to achieve earlier product delivery, and because of that decision, they must make recurring interest payments in the form of wasted effort. While engineers hate waste, management sees the issue in terms of costs. If there are significant cost savings by spending time reducing wasted effort, then managers will see it as a good investment, otherwise they may think developers should just keep on wasting that effort. Companies exist to make money, not reduce wasted effort.