If engineers do that, then they don't need to use the term "technical debt" anyways. They can just claim a feature takes twice as long and then play around 50%

If engineers do that, then they don't need to use the term "technical debt" anyways. They can just claim a feature takes twice as long and then play around 50% of the time. So in reality, it's not "technical debt" that's the issue, it's that engineers don't have the right incentives from the beginning.