Tech debt isn’t bad code. It’s borrowed time.

Every shortcut you take to ship faster is a loan. Interest comes due eventually. The question is whether you can afford the payments.

What Tech Debt Actually Is

It’s not bugs. It’s not missing features.

Tech debt is the gap between what you built and what you should have built, given what you know now.

Examples:

• Hardcoded values that should be configurable
• No automated tests for critical paths
• Copy-pasted code instead of shared functions
• Database queries that work but don’t scale
• Manual processes that should be automated

All of these worked when you made them. All of them cost you later.

The Real Cost

I track our tech debt in dollars. Sounds weird. But it makes tradeoffs clear.

Direct costs:

• Developer time fixing things that shouldn’t break
• Longer onboarding for new engineers
• Slower feature development as complexity grows

Indirect costs:

• Bugs that lose customers
• Downtime that loses revenue
• Opportunities missed because building is too slow

For us, tech debt costs roughly $3,000/month in direct developer time. Probably another $2,000-5,000 in indirect costs.

$5,000-8,000/month. That’s real money.

When Tech Debt Is Fine

Not all debt is bad. Sometimes borrowing makes sense.

Take on debt when:

• You’re validating a market and might pivot
• Speed to market matters more than perfection
• The feature might be killed in 3 months
• You’re pre-revenue and cash is tight

Early-stage startups should have tech debt. Building perfectly before product-market fit is waste.

When Tech Debt Kills You

Pay it down when:

• New features take 3x longer than they should
• Every change breaks something else
• You can’t hire because engineers see the codebase
• Customers are leaving due to bugs
• One developer leaving would be catastrophic

The warning sign: when debt interest exceeds new development. If you spend more time fixing than building, you’re underwater.

How We Handle It

20% rule

Every sprint, 20% of engineering time goes to debt. Not negotiable. Not postponed when deadlines loom.

Small, consistent payments beat heroic catch-up efforts.

Debt register

We maintain a list of known debt with estimated cost-to-fix and interest-per-month. Helps prioritize.

High-interest debt gets paid first. Low-interest debt can wait.

No new debt on critical paths

Our payment processing and user authentication have zero tolerance for shortcuts. Some systems can’t afford interest.

The Founder’s Mistake

Non-technical founders often see debt paydown as “not building features.”

Wrong.

Debt paydown is building capability. It’s making future features faster. It’s reducing future bugs.

If your CTO says “we need to address tech debt,” listen. They’re not being precious. They’re protecting velocity.

The Honest Assessment

Every startup I’ve seen with 3+ years of unaddressed debt is struggling. Development is slow. Engineers are frustrated. Bugs are constant.

Every startup I’ve seen that pays down debt consistently moves faster over time. They can respond to market changes. They can scale.

There’s no shortcut. Pay as you go. Or pay with interest.