IMHO, the most important thing is to remember what is your goal in the first place. It is way too easy for an engineer to lose himself in the microsphere of hi

IMHO, the most important thing is to remember what is your goal in the first place. It is way too easy for an engineer to lose himself in the microsphere of his project, wanting to make better software for the sake of better software. That often clashes with the goal of the organization - the only relevant result is whether the software works or not (or, in the case of most non-critical applications, what percentage of software works). The downside is that technical debt can massively increase development time - and there is no way to measure how much time you're losing because, to know that, you would have to be free of technical debt in the exact same scenario.