You either have tech debt, or you haven’t done anything.
It’s like cleaning, you’re never done cleaning, you just stop when the dirtiness is at an acceptable level.
Now, if someone said “We have very little tech debt because people who take on our tech debt are promoted or given bonuses.” That would be wonderful.
Tbf, I might have seen a unicorn: A hospital with no tech debt neither me nor my technically more inclined colleagues could find. And we were literally paid for looking for things swept under the rug.
They had a top notch IT department with very professional management who (despite their limited budget) managed to attract talented people - simply with good working conditions, a room for creativity, etc. Everything they had was so well documented that it made me cry and think of my company’s documentation. And while they intentionally did not go with every trend and fad their stuff was rock solid and modern. I have seen much much larger companies with half their thought into infrastructure, etc.
I don’t know if they still maintain that standard,but it was a real unicorn.
That sounds wonderful. Typically if a place has that little tech debt it means that they’ve overhired and there isn’t enough work, but if you said they were on a limited budget, then maybe not. It does sound like the kind of place where I can imagine that happening though. A tech-focused workplace would probably find or create other work. For a hospital, the IT department is a random cost centre, and probably fairly cheap compared to doctors, medical equipment, insurance, etc. And, a hospital probably understands much better than most workplaces about why security is important (keeping patient records private), why a “move fast and break things” attitude is sometimes a terrible fit, why documentation and checklists matter, etc.
Did you ask them if there was any tech debt? Because, I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought there were things they could improve. Like, the documentation probably looked complete to you, but maybe they knew that there were a few areas they could have done better. Like, with the “cleaning” analogy, I’ve been places I thought were spotless, but the people who cleaned it always thought there was more they could do.
Sadly the realities are different: I visit around one healthcare facility every other week in all of Europe, far more infrequently in Africa, Asia and Oceania.
Hospitals consistently have the worst IT departments I ever see - outdated technology, budget constraints (I literally saw a full IT loss due to “we don’t pay for our firewall licences for over 3 years”) and a fucking lack of care. One of the most well known clinical information systems has a hardcoded admin account with a single letter as PW in it Another popular system will try to install an ancient version of TeamViewer. In other words: It’s a mess - btw often the budgets are huge and more than what nurses cost.
That’s why this unicorn stuck with me. They were “relaxed” - because they all had a workload that was “manageable”, there was someone to take over if shit hits the fan,etc. And they didn’t feel like they would need to do this and this - I know and fear this myself, it’s the bane of my existence as a project guy. They? They had a nice, lean but powerful project workflow and change management.
In the end it all came down to very very good management - a manager who knows their team that well is worth their weight iin gold.
Broadly speaking, technical debt is a trade-off between quality and expediency. The problem isn’t that it exists. The problem is that businesses will saddle themselves with debt and refuse to pay it back.
The difference between swiping a credit card and closing the balance out at the end of the month. And carrying around a forever-rising balance on a card that’s charging you 29% APY.
Any time I have a “superior” that insists tech debt isn’t a problem, I feel an incredibly strong compulsion to lock them in a room with a laptop and tell them to implement something extensibly and maintainably in our codebase, and that they won’t be let out or fed until they do.
And by “implement” I mean write the code and the tests and test automation.
And then they have to pass a code review, and write appropriate doc for any externally facing interfaces/apis/ui/etc.
We’d stop having stupid fucking opinions like that right goddamn quick if this policy were implemented.
What are tests and test automation? What documentation? What’s a code review? Can you please come talk to my boss?
The ultimate red flag. They probably lie about paying you, too.
The boss probably isn’t lying about no technical debt. He’s probably just too dumb or ignorant to know about it.
If he mentions it, one has to assume that he knows enough about it to lie.
He can know about it as a concept without really understanding it and if he he treats the dev team as a code producing machine then he could be ignorant of how much technical debt there is. Or maybe there’s an asshat on the dev team telling him there’s no technical debt.
