Imo it's easier to quantify the value of adding new code than removing old code (in terms of dollars). Things that are more easily to quantify the value of tend

Imo it's easier to quantify the value of adding new code than removing old code (in terms of dollars). Things that are more easily to quantify the value of tend to get higher priority. Same applies to other areas like performance optimization, testing, security, patching (some of these have high level data like the cost of incidents/downtime or the cost of a breach) Some companies have processes in place to try to balance this like 20% of time spent on tech debt reduction