At one point I had four different pitch decks for the same piece of work. Same work, same cost, same engineers, four completely different stories, each one tailored to whoever I needed a yes from in that particular room. And the engineering argument wasn't the lead in any of them, because that was the pitch that hardly ever worked.

Everybody agrees it's there

The odd thing about tech debt, in my career at least, is that I can't remember meeting anyone who denied it existed. Product knew, finance knew, the board knew, and they'd all nod along when I talked about it. Everyone acknowledged it, and very few of them ever wanted to do anything about it.

The term comes from Ward Cunningham, back in the early nineties (worth a search if you've only ever heard it used as a swear word), and the loan is the whole metaphor. You ship something quicker than you should, and you've borrowed against the future. Fine, everybody borrows. What gets you is the interest.…