All bad code is tech debt, but not in the sense that it was consciously chosen. We usually only talk about the cases that currently limit progress/quality. The

All bad code is tech debt, but not in the sense that it was consciously chosen. We usually only talk about the cases that currently limit progress/quality. The interest rate varies on where that bad code lives and how cumbersome it is to work with. If it's in an area with frequent changes that are incidentally difficult to implement, then it's high on the tech debt list.