[throwDec21]

In my career I have tried hard to avoid technical debt, I've learnt the project architecture before writing much code, I've refactored a lot of stuff, kept dependencies up to date, written loads of tests. As such I've stayed in jobs 4-8 years and become invaluable to each one.

However its been terrible for my career. In job interviews people wonder what I've achieved because it really is difficult to prove how you can design and write code. The guys who spend a year or two sh**ing all over the code base as they knock out new features really are doing the right thing. Managers dont care about tech debt, they just want new features.

[simplestats]

It's the asymmetrical information problem. The worse danger for the interviewer is ending up with a bad programmer who also can't get anything done. The system is optimal for hiring barely-capable people desperately operating at their max. Especially when the software projects and startups fail in the market anyway, before they every need to deal with the mounting technical debt.

[beachy]

> Managers dont care about tech debt, they just want new features

Founders (technical ones anyway) likely do care about technical debt. They know it could be death to their future ambitions.

Managers have little reason to unless the organization has a sound culture. If they feel like hired guns who may be let go if there is a bad quarter, then their motivations are e.g juice their resume with cool new technology.

[slt2021]

Its more like experienced tech leaders have guardrails to prevent accruing unnecessary tech debt by using code reviews, arch reviews, etc