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I bristle against most articles that posit "x isn't y, it's actually z" (Speakers like Simon Sinek have made entire careers out of this specific rhetorical app

I bristle against most articles that posit "x isn't y, it's actually z" (Speakers like Simon Sinek have made entire careers out of this specific rhetorical approach.) In almost all cases, x is both y and z. Such is the truth about tech debt. Tech debt can but a strategic lever for success but is usually simultaneously a burden. I don't find the examples in the article very on point. Twitter using publicly available storage systems until 2014 doesn't strike me as a form tech debt at all. Rather it is is a logical system design decision based on Twitter's business and organizational focus at the time.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Tech debt can [be] a strategic lever for success but is usually simultaneously a burden. This isn't just true, it's the point of the “debt” metaphor; financial debt is also something used because it is a strategic lever for success but which is a burden once taken on. (It's true that use of the metaphor tends to emphasize the burden part because it is often deployed where the lever of success part is already internalized without regard for downstream cost.)