To be fair, many "low level" technical decisions also cost orders of magnitude more than was originally intended. Not coincidentally, there is rarely strong st

To be fair, many "low level" technical decisions also cost orders of magnitude more than was originally intended. Not coincidentally, there is rarely strong strategic technical direction at the organization level. Rarely is there accountability (especially for middle management) in making sure that cobol is actually deprecated, those Windows XP boxes are actually powered down, and that gnarly business logic is cleaned up and well-tested. It's worth noting that typically there's collusion from all levels to create one of those problems. That being said, there's not much an individual contributor can do about massive strategic mistakes other than move to another org. A magical org with great engineers and no major technical debt.