[marginalia_nu]

I get that a lot of people in IT are very facts-focused, but if you want to actually convince people that they need to act in some fashion, you need to add some emotional weight to your arguments (pulling numbers out of your ass is one way of doing that).

Admit it or not, the reason you want the technical debt addressed is primarily emotional. You are frustrated with how difficult it is to work, you fear for the future of the project. If you want to compel someone in charge to make changes, you need to make them feel things are bad as well.

This is to be used responsibly, though. If it turns out you've convinced someone into acting in a way that is against their interest or a big waste of time, there will probably be blowback later.

[selfhoster11]

Fear of project failure is the signal that the company (= your employment prospects) will be damaged. Frustration with how difficult the work is, is a signal that the current path is unsustainable, and that burnout will set in, thereby damaging your ability to work (= your employment prospects).

It's perfectly rational to be concerned about these things. We are not machines - or rather, we are machines that have mental/psychological/monetary needs that have to be met in the course of our daily employment.

[marginalia_nu]

There is no purely logical reason to ever actually do anything. It all starts with what you want and what you don't want. You may of course derive logically sound paths to get what you want or avoid what you don't want, but that's something else.

If you explain these logical steps to someone else, what you're doing is showing them that they too will likely be affected by what you're suffering, that is, showing them they have a reason to fear too.

[selfhoster11]

We are getting into the weeds here. Unless you are trying to tell me that there is no logical reason to trying to meet the bottom few tiers of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, in which case, while you may be right in a very strict sense ("nothing and nobody matters"), it's an extremely nit-picking position.

[marginalia_nu]

That is actually exactly what I'm saying.

A message's ability to provoke some form of action is entirely dependent on its ability to create some form of emotion, be it fear and indignation or hope and optimism. The most effective rhetoricians are exactly those that are very good at producing those feelings. From Hitler on one side as the archetypal rabble-rouser; to MLK on the other end of the spectrum, who created profound optimism and hope. It isn't because of their syllogisms that they were convincing rhetoricians.

Merely knowing a fact is rarely sufficient to provoke action, unless that knowledge itself creates an emotion (an idea can have aesthetic value, for example).

[andrew_]

In my experience this isn't an issue if there is good leadership in place.