[dingaling]

The problem with technical debt versus financial debt is that the latter has a monthly mandatory cost ( interest payments ) that can't be ignored and which is visible all the way up to the C-level, whereas middle-management can keep obscuring the presence of technical debt and pushing its repayment out to the right.

Essentially it's a 'free' internal debt, regardless of how often architects and developers complain of its cost.

Thus in a contest between doing something right, but expensively, versus good-enough-for-now but technically-constrained the latter will usually win.

[tomblomfield]

It's not "free", it's just much harder to measure.

The cost is reduced development velocity, and perhaps reduced systems stability.

[lostcolony]

Which developers get blamed for, even though it was a managerial decision to take on the debt.

Financial debt has clear cost; technical debt doesn't. So it seems 'free' to the non-technical.