- If the contractor finds asbestos *which was put in by the contractor himself because using asbestos was legal (and cheaper) up to 2 years ago"...
- If the mechanic that sold me my previously owned car without telling me that servicing would be more expensive in the future...
- If the lawyer who was originally part of the team that helped draft the old law...
etc.
- a developer takes a certain strategy that is no longer valid (even technical debt that isn't recognized early on as being something that will have to be changed more than likely soon, is still technical debt in my mind -- your ability to recognize technical debt early on just means you know you're incurring it)
- developers often incur technical debt without explaining to stakeholders about it because a) they don't care b) they don't think the stakeholders care c) they want to get the work done and not get dinged
- developers who have to pay for technical debt may be the creators of that debt to begin with...(of course, I'd wager that most technical debt is handled by someone else who comes later because I'm rarely given the chance to fix problems I created, project managers can be judgmental like that - and project managers have to be convinced that we can just apply some more duct tape)
Tech debt usually occurs when the people implementing it aren't aligned with the with the stakeholders.
Obviously someone* put that there. It didn't just install itself. Regardless of whether the contractor installed it themselves or not, the reality is it's there now and needs to be removed.
In other words, the analogy still holds regardless of "oh they put it there"
> - If the mechanic that sold me my previously owned car without telling me that servicing would be more expensive in the future...
That is exactly what every car dealership does with their "powertrain" warranties and service packages.
> - If the lawyer who was originally part of the team that helped draft the old law...
AAAAAAAHHHAHAHAHHHAHAAAA New to the legal system?
In any case my point is not "there is no tech debt if you created it yourself" it is more about "from the point of view of business tech debt is not something they care about: it is sonething they expect to just be sorted out transparently or that should not even happen". After all, Microsoft never bills them for "tech debt", it just ask them to reboot to update their laptops, no?
I am not saying this is fair, or right. I am just trying to explain why mentioning "tech debt" falls on deaf ears.
Say you run a large plumbing company, and you discover your plumbers took shortcuts on a particular job that resulted in an abundance of leaks for a given project.
The plumbing company cannot ask the plumbers for their pay back. They will have to eat the cost and fix the plumbing.
So, it's the business's problem either way. They can additionally choose to fire those plumbers if they want, which is line with your point of not believing the plumbers had no idea.
But it's still the company's debt to pay. They made the mistake of hiring people that were not capable of surfacing risks.
Exactly the problem we always deal with: Business tends to distrust Tech because we always seem unable to stay on top of things we build ourselves
"There is never enough time to do it right, there is always time to do it twice"