This post is part of a From The Archives series I am doing to move my posts over from LinkedIn. This was originally posted on November 7, 2025.
Technical debt has been on my mind a lot lately, and I'm beginning to realize its very real impact. After years of neglect, the interest rate is high and the balance is coming due. There are only two methods of payment: system failure or operational slog.
It's like the popular "buy now, pay later" concept—I adopt some technical system today in a rush to fill a requirement, and down the road, future teams pay the debt with their sanity.
Some technical debt is unavoidable; it's the natural cycle of technical systems. Technologies change, hardware reaches end-of-life, and electronic systems speed toward planned obsolescence. This is acceptable technical debt.
Insurmountable technical debt, however, accrues over years without a technical strategy and without thought to the knock-on effects. Sometimes it grows from a lack of subject matter expertise or systems thinking. Other times it results from rushed or poor decision-making, with no consideration of potential future implications.
Building on a foundation of technical debt isn't improvement—it's just a HELOC to remodel your house of technical debt, masking the true risk of a faulty foundation. Nothing has changed because you haven't dealt with the foundational issues that caused the debt in the first place. Better flip that place quick before the next owner catches on.
It takes engineering discipline and forward thinking to mitigate technical debt before it starts. While you can't avoid it completely, simple practices like documentation, labeling, cable management, questioning requirements, and standardizing systems can help.
To return to the house metaphor: if you've got a solid foundation on good ground, you can remodel, add a deck, or paint the living room—whatever you want—because the foundation is solid. Building that foundation costs more time, thought, and effort today but gives you far more freedom and peace of mind later. A solid foundation lets you weather the storms of changing business requirements and resource constraints much more easily when you aren't also trying to hold the house together with duct tape.
Technical debt has been on my mind a lot lately, and I'm beginning to realize its very real impact. After years of neglect, the interest rate is high and the balance is coming due. There are only two methods of payment: system failure or operational slog.
It's like the popular "buy now, pay later" concept—I adopt some technical system today in a rush to fill a requirement, and down the road, future teams pay the debt with their sanity.
Some technical debt is unavoidable; it's the natural cycle of technical systems. Technologies change, hardware reaches end-of-life, and electronic systems speed toward planned obsolescence. This is acceptable technical debt.
Insurmountable technical debt, however, accrues over years without a technical strategy and without thought to the knock-on effects. Sometimes it grows from a lack of subject matter expertise or systems thinking. Other times it results from rushed or poor decision-making, with no consideration of potential future implications.
Building on a foundation of technical debt isn't improvement—it's just a HELOC to remodel your house of technical debt, masking the true risk of a faulty foundation. Nothing has changed because you haven't dealt with the foundational issues that caused the debt in the first place. Better flip that place quick before the next owner catches on.
It takes engineering discipline and forward thinking to mitigate technical debt before it starts. While you can't avoid it completely, simple practices like documentation, labeling, cable management, questioning requirements, and standardizing systems can help.
To return to the house metaphor: if you've got a solid foundation on good ground, you can remodel, add a deck, or paint the living room—whatever you want—because the foundation is solid. Building that foundation costs more time, thought, and effort today but gives you far more freedom and peace of mind later. A solid foundation lets you weather the storms of changing business requirements and resource constraints much more easily when you aren't also trying to hold the house together with duct tape.