[akitzmiller]

>> Tech debt, unlike financial debt, is an asset to no one, it’s only a diminishment of value.

A lot of the technical debt discussions I've read are very development team focused. What is often missing is the value to the user. Assuming your software is meant to make some group of users more efficient, over certain time periods, the user is getting value regardless of the cleanness of the code (within certain reasonable limits).

For most of my career, I've done small team internal software projects. The value of those projects is the improved efficiency of the users minus the amount of developer hours put in. Time spent refactoring can absolutely be worthwhile, but code improvements that don't add to user efficiency have to be carefully chosen, otherwise you're cutting into the value the organization is accumulating.

[analog31]

Oddly enough, tech debt is an asset to the people who are paid to maintain it.

[akitzmiller]

Putting two kids through college on it.