I guess you have never had to come in and solve a bad situation that has arisen specifically due to the bad short term decisions someone made in the past. Not

I guess you have never had to come in and solve a bad situation that has arisen specifically due to the bad short term decisions someone made in the past. Not all tech debt is bad, as long as it is recognized when being created and gets accounted for in near future planning. That way it is a deliberate decision taken, after weighing pros and cons, knowing it will need to be dealt with at some point. The worst of these is when those making the decisions don't know as much as they think they do, forgo weighing pros and cons, and paint them selves into a corner by accident. Those kinds of situations can literally kill a company (and have).