Thank you for this comment. It matches quite closely with my thinking on the issue. A generic term like “tech debt” is lazy and does not capture anything about

Thank you for this comment. It matches quite closely with my thinking on the issue. A generic term like “tech debt” is lazy and does not capture anything about the business value or decision making process that led to the code or would lead you to want to replace it. For example in many organizations you make a completely justified business decision to put less time or more junior engineers on a project that isn’t that important. This isn’t tech debt, it’s a conscious decision made by completely rational people. On the flip side, if that project that was of lesser importance becomes important again you can make another completely rational decision to go in and clean it up to make it faster/more reliable/simpler or whatever the goal may be.