The problem with technical debt versus financial debt is that the latter has a monthly mandatory cost ( interest payments ) that can't be ignored and which is v

The problem with technical debt versus financial debt is that the latter has a monthly mandatory cost ( interest payments ) that can't be ignored and which is visible all the way up to the C-level, whereas middle-management can keep obscuring the presence of technical debt and pushing its repayment out to the right. Essentially it's a 'free' internal debt, regardless of how often architects and developers complain of its cost. Thus in a contest between doing something right, but expensively, versus good-enough-for-now but technically-constrained the latter will usually win.