All tech debt need not be paid back in full - thinking otherwise is indeed a fallacy like you point out. The catch here though is the fact that rate of busines

All tech debt need not be paid back in full - thinking otherwise is indeed a fallacy like you point out. The catch here though is the fact that rate of business value production is inversely proportional to amount of tech debt. Meaning a ton of yes's today will mean a grinding halt in a couple of years. I have worked on too many (very successful) teams now and watched many others that have gotten themselves into this situation. After this point, you end in a place where tech debt repayment efforts can take years - but it also coincides with 4-5 year mark when original developers are tired and leave. End product - a giant legacy system operated by a ton of new folk who have no clue what's up. End result: This gets 'deprecated' and replaced by a brand new one. Ideally I do think data is gold but code needs to be incrementally ripped out and replaced every 3-5 years or so. Else entropy is too crippling on the system.