That makes it sound like technical debt is a financial matter, that it's reasonable to bargain about. It isn't - it's crappy code that is a pain to work with, that will make devs quit, and will cause bugs.
I've worked on a project with 200 devs, and one year of rushed history. The entire project was technical debt, which was never "paid off". When I said it needed refactoring, I was told to refactor it myself. After two weeks' work, my effort failed, I got dinged, and my reputation suffered.
We didn't have CI, or a test-suite, not even a decent RCS. I didn't have a chance. I should have kept my mouth shut.
Code being a pain to work with, causing devs to quit and constantly causing bugs is costing massive amounts of money in lost productivity.
Every hour the Senior Engineer wastes putting out fires is $100+ down the drain. Management simply refuses to include these costs in their calculations.
We should start keeping track of this time expenditure very accurately and repeatedly show it to higher management: this is how much tech dept has cost this project this month.
Unfortunately, they still won't listen. We're just whiny little babies in their eyes.
I've worked on a project with 200 devs, and one year of rushed history. The entire project was technical debt, which was never "paid off". When I said it needed refactoring, I was told to refactor it myself. After two weeks' work, my effort failed, I got dinged, and my reputation suffered.
We didn't have CI, or a test-suite, not even a decent RCS. I didn't have a chance. I should have kept my mouth shut.