Similarly, fixing that technical debt will likely look like pure overhead while the benefit of "other people will finish future features faster and with fewer b

Similarly, fixing that technical debt will likely look like pure overhead while the benefit of "other people will finish future features faster and with fewer bugs" gets socialized, realized diffusely and goes largely unrecognized (except, if you're lucky, by the other developers themselves). I learned that one the hard way. Features get priority because features have got visibility. The picture gets even worse when you consider the probability that fixing technical debt will break things.