[yarper]

The problem with this is that badly written software actually costs more to write than a properly engineered product.

Sure, the initial impulse is cheaper if you hire all greenhorns but after a year? after five years? When the business decides that they want to move from AWS to Azure for X immutable reason?

[analognoise]

If technical debt becomes outward facing, the market punishes those involved. As long as technical debt is something engineers complain about but can keep putting the fires out on, then it does make business sense (after a fashion) - a wiser or more apt management might arguably do better, but if it isn't sufficient to make a company uncompetitive then it can at least be argued to be a worthwhile strategy, especially if you get smart young people for cheap who are willing to work brutal hours and then you just replace them when as they wise up and burn/age out.

[yarper]

All sectors or organisations being "disrupted" have become slow moving or invested in the status quo. No quicker way to get slow moving than have huge amounts of tech debt.