technical debt is a better metaphor once you know that engineers don’t borrow from technical credit cards but rather from technical loan sharks
technical debt isn’t clean managed debt like business debt. it’s an obligation scrawled illegibly on a cocktail napkin.
the inevitable result of unpaid technical debt is that you and your colleagues get your technical legs broken by the technical equivalent of Tony Soprano.
the ultimate outcome of refusal to pay technical debt is your whole stack gets whacked
so next time you hear “we released on time at a cost of some technical debt” you should mentally interpret that as “we borrowed a bunch of money from Tony Soprano but don’t worry. he’s cool.”
in fact all technical debt is the domain of technical Tony Soprano so when you hear “we can let our technical debt ride a little longer” you can replace that with “Mr. Soprano assures me it’s fine to let our debt ride.”
“We have no significant technical debt” becomes
“Mr. Soprano assures me our debt to him is of no significance.”
“Mr. Soprano assures me our debt to him is of no significance.”
"We'll never need to pay our technical debt down" becomes
"Mr. Soprano assures me we will never need to pay back the money he gave us."
"Mr. Soprano assures me we will never need to pay back the money he gave us."
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