In general, we try to avoid technical debt and instead take on functional debt, cutting features and falling back to workarounds where they exist. When dealing

In general, we try to avoid technical debt and instead take on functional debt, cutting features and falling back to workarounds where they exist. When dealing with a technical-debt-laden code base, it's important to communicate to the people who set the priorities that changes become more time consuming and buggy as the code continues to be added upon. I did this at my last job and they understood the risks and impacts. They determined that they would give me the time to make changes, but not to refactor. My estimates just got longer and longer and business went on as usual. At least I wasn't held to unrealistic deadlines.