At one point I had four different pitch decks for the same piece of work. Same work, same cost, same engineers, four different stories, and not one of them led with the engineering argument, because that was the one that never worked.
Everyone I worked with agreed the tech debt was there. Very few of them wanted to do anything about it.
Twice I was brought in specifically to pay it down. One was a startup with a few years of debt and one explicit job, and deployments went from about eight person-hours to about twenty-five minutes. the other a retailer with decades piled into a monolith and a brief of about twelve words.
On the retailer, months went on paying interest before a penny came off the principal. From the outside that looks like nothing happening, and the name on the promise was mine rather than the company's.
You end up guarantor on a loan you never took out, for a lender who'll only lend if you over-promise.
#TechDebt #SoftwareEngineering #EngineeringLeadership #DevOps
https://phpboyscout.uk/the-tech-debt-you-cant-fix-alone/