[HN Gopher] Technical debt is an invisible $1.52T problem
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       Technical debt is an invisible $1.52T problem
        
       Author : bookofjoe
       Score  : 11 points
       Date   : 2024-03-31 22:35 UTC (24 minutes ago)
        
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 (TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
        
       | bookofjoe wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/5taMT
        
       | 2devnull wrote:
       | "The only lasting fix for technical debt is for management to
       | empower the IT side of an organization to start saying no to all
       | the requests for shiny new things, and focus on making what an
       | organization already has more robust, more secure and
       | futureproof."
       | 
       | One could argue that technical debt is really just regular debt.
       | If can see that, then you also will see that federal fiscal and
       | monetary policy are really the long term fix, not IT departments
       | saying "No" which of course they already do.
        
         | thfuran wrote:
         | The whole problem is that it isn't. If it were regular debt, it
         | would be visible on balance sheets instead of just ruining
         | everything behind the scenes.
        
       | oneplane wrote:
       | Is it really invisible, or is it just not shown?
       | 
       | I've seen plenty of environments where the technical debt stares
       | you in the face wherever you look, but no reports make it to
       | decision makers (and the ones to make decisions are generally not
       | the ones in the position to see all that debt).
       | 
       | If you're in an org pretending everything is fine, that would
       | probably apply to many more problem topics and not just technical
       | debt.
        
       | ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
       | Business people continue to collect large paychecks while
       | technical debt ruins their companies ability to deliver
       | innovative product. There are no repercussions, and no mechanism
       | to correct this. There's also no easy visibility into the fact
       | that this is occurring, aside from the mental strain on
       | junior/mid level engineers. Even at the principle engineer level,
       | the incentive is to continue collecting paychecks and not rock
       | the boat. There are many exceptions among technically
       | sophisticated companies, but your average old school company is
       | really a vessel for corporate careerists to build personal
       | wealth.
        
       | cebert wrote:
       | I've been in the software industry for over 16 years now. From my
       | experiences, it seems like it's always more difficult to get
       | investment in addressing technical debt. First many developers,
       | me included, aren't always the best at communicating the value
       | investing in scoped improvements projects bring to the business.
       | I've gotten better at this, but executives don't see software the
       | same way engineers do. Second, investing in a new feature or
       | project can easily become a more desirable investment because
       | it's new, exciting, and potentially a differentiator. The best
       | way to get investment to address tech debt seems to have a crisis
       | unless organizations have a deliberate, systematic process the
       | helps avoid accumulating too much debt.
        
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