> What were small, scrappy companies in 2010/2011 are now either dead or medium sized companies with mounds of poorly documented, idiosyncratic technical debt — the apparent cost of ninjas and rockstars.

This is somewhat of an aside to what the article mainly talks about, but I don't really know that all of this has to do with the engineers vs the companies.

Today's scrappy and small companies are still trying to find fit fast, and still have to be tactical. They can't avoid a pile of tech debt because they don't yet know what they need to build. Building a really fancy solution to a problem and then having that problem change out from under you is just another kind of tech debt.

So even without a focus on "rock stars", how can you avoid tech debt when you're in an exploratory phase?

Seems a bit of an instance of a common way for slightly-less-young-companies to shoot themselves in the foot. If your tech debt is just due to those other people who screwed up when building the initial systems, then of course it's a good idea to rewrite the world!