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How often do products go under because of unresolved tech debt? Is it many? When I first got into software I spent a lot of time on refactoring and cleaning up

How often do products go under because of unresolved tech debt? Is it many? When I first got into software I spent a lot of time on refactoring and cleaning up code. As time goes on I find myself doing that less and less, and just focusing on work that produces meaningful results. Fixing tech debt, from what I can tell, is less meaningful than conventional wisdom says it is. No software will be perfect. Eventually it will die and something will replace it. I think knowing what "good enough" is, is perhaps the more important capability. Larger fruit hangs lower than tech debt the vast majority of the time.

jahewson 4y ago
When a software startup fails it’s rare that we ever get to find out the real reason for it. The straw that broke the camels back gets the blame - the recession, some hackers, Google, whatever. Nobody goes to the newspaper saying hey, we neglected every possible aspect of care and maintenance over the years, put a bunch of interns on fixing issues using spreadsheets and raw SQL and bled our customers dry over a decade until they all left. Usually the bigco that got suckered into acquiring them gets the blame and the founders are on a yacht in the Caribbean. Tech debt won’t kill a company but it will strip away its immune system leaving it vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. Then the deadly hiccup gets the blame.
- Nomentatus 4y ago
  I've known a case way back where deliberate tech debt of a sort was built up by not switching to a more modern compiler for a prototype. The idea was to then do a hopefully-quick rewrite on a more modern setup to obtain the minimal viable product (not a term at that time.) But Microsoft (who I think probably got wind of this product) announced a very similar product (that never appeared as such, and did not appear at all for at least a decade. The problem was harder than it looked.) Our financial backers immediately and fully pulled out, verbal contracts notwithstanding. With no more cash, the company was dead. A few years later others created just part of this product, and raked in very nice profits for a long time. If the same prototype had been built on the more modern compiler, that would have been the minimum viable product. The more modern compiler was one able to use more memory as the 286 cpu allowed.

jahewson 4y ago

When a software startup fails it’s rare that we ever get to find out the real reason for it. The straw that broke the camels back gets the blame - the recession, some hackers, Google, whatever. Nobody goes to the newspaper saying hey, we neglected every possible aspect of care and maintenance over the years, put a bunch of interns on fixing issues using spreadsheets and raw SQL and bled our customers dry over a decade until they all left. Usually the bigco that got suckered into acquiring them gets the blame and the founders are on a yacht in the Caribbean. Tech debt won’t kill a company but it will strip away its immune system leaving it vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. Then the deadly hiccup gets the blame.

Nomentatus 4y ago
I've known a case way back where deliberate tech debt of a sort was built up by not switching to a more modern compiler for a prototype. The idea was to then do a hopefully-quick rewrite on a more modern setup to obtain the minimal viable product (not a term at that time.) But Microsoft (who I think probably got wind of this product) announced a very similar product (that never appeared as such, and did not appear at all for at least a decade. The problem was harder than it looked.) Our financial backers immediately and fully pulled out, verbal contracts notwithstanding. With no more cash, the company was dead. A few years later others created just part of this product, and raked in very nice profits for a long time. If the same prototype had been built on the more modern compiler, that would have been the minimum viable product. The more modern compiler was one able to use more memory as the 286 cpu allowed.