Technical Debt

“We got fast software, but software, if you're going to build a real company, can't be throwaway. Maybe it can, but I don't think it can be, if you're really going to do this because you get just technical debt and you've got to start over again.”

“If I were building a SaaS today, I would try to avoid it. I would want a full-time person dedicated to, you know, whether that's me or whether that is someone that I hire. There's a certain amount of ownership of the code base And technical debt will screw you…”

“I don't even think it's going to end up mattering because AI is going to solve all technical debt.”

“As coding assessments, assistants, so that's sort of a machine translation problem between natural language and some programming language and there I really worry about technical debt where you have, you know, output code that was not written by a person that'…”

“You actually want evidence of technical debt affecting revenue, affecting customer outcomes. And you want to compile the evidence because otherwise if you don't have evidence or you just refer it to as like technical debt overall, it is just like, you can go f…”

“There's a big research initiative. We've started at Microsoft research about a year ago where like the whole mission of the lab is like eliminate tech debt at scale using these new AI tools.”

“I would rather under-engineer something than over-engineer it if I were gonna err on the side of something. And here's the reason is that when you under-engineer it yes, you take on tech debt but the interest rate is relatively known and payoff is very, very p…”

“Usually Q four for us is infrastructure quarter, right? We just like go and build all the infrastructure. Q four is generally, you know, we've already delivered a ton of products and stuff. We're feeling pretty good about the rest of the year. Things are windi…”

“As a startup, your job is to take on technical debt, right? Because that is how you operate faster than a bigger company, right? Bigger companies don't take on technical debt. They pay it usually right away, or they're paying back technical debt. From the days…”

“Like you have to earn the right to exist in the future and paying down tech debt doesn't pay the bills. And so I think at that stage, it's probably a little bit early to start paying down technical debt.”

“I actually think technical debt is almost less of an issue over time, particularly with generative AI, which is actually incredibly forgiving of how you integrate it. You don't have to have like perfect systems like you perhaps used to, or certainly not as mon…”

“Infrastructure is the product. Period. Like, I, people are like, oh, tech debt. I'm like, yeah, it's the product debt. I cannot build a skyscraper on a shaky foundation. So it is your problem, too. It's not for the engineer to, like, be barging on the door abo…”

“I will often see either if they're using sprint models, then like one out of every four, one out of every eight sprints is dedicated purely to technical debt and cleanup, or it's 20% Or some number that you feel comfortable with of the time is spent cleaning u…”

“Technical debt is weakness built into your system because of decisions you made about how you put it together. And the reason I emphasize that is I'll have clients say to me, oh gosh, we have so much technical debt. We have like a million bugs in production. N…”

“It's a, it's something that accumulates over time in kind of a hockey stick curve, where in the beginning, you know, it's, you don't notice it probably, or you notice little things here or there, but once you're becoming very aware of it, it's usually a massiv…”

“That was not a bug, people. We knew exactly what we were doing. So here's the deal. Back in the day, computer memory used to be very expensive. And you are constantly pressured. Don't use so much of it. Don't use so much. Well, one way you can cut down on memo…”

“Hoarding is a technical debt problem. Think about the definition. It's a system that has weakness in it because of decisions that were made about how it was put together.”

“I actually believe private equity people are better than VCs at solving it, right? Because that's what they do for a living. They buy old, not those super big ones like Tomo Bravo or Vista, but the smaller PE firms who buy, kind of, 20 to fifty million dollar …”

“I find that generally folks kind of rush through the product that they're acquiring and not fully understanding the technical debt that exists within the business. If there is any, and in most cases with software there typically is.”

“Have learned that spaghetti code is a short-term optimization and actually you're taking on technical debt. You're taking on physical debt if you are not like working out and eating right each day, you know?”

“I think most good engineering teams sort of look at technical debt like a credit card, right? You know, a balance of zero means you're probably not leveraging it enough. And if you owe Amex a 150,000 dollars, that's probably not good either.”

“And like you can't hire your way out of that. Every, every person that you hire just ends up becoming less and less productive.”

“And if you think about it, biology is all about technical debt. Biology is trying to get that MVP out. You're trying to, like, survive the T-Rex coming after you. You know, you're not gonna be able to make things perfect.”

“It's useful to be a hacker and use technical debt for your, you know, as leverage. If you're not sure something's going to work, you've got to be willing to throw it away and you don't want to invest too much.”