2 posts tagged with "technical-debt"

Technical debt is often viewed solely as a negative consequence of poor engineering—a mess that needs to be cleaned up. However, at ttoss, we view technical debt through a different lens: as a financial instrument called leverage.

This is especially true in the age of AI. As code generation becomes a commodity, the ability to strategically incur and repay debt defines the velocity of a team. When used consciously, technical debt allows us to ship faster, learn earlier, and capture market opportunities. When accumulated unconsciously, it becomes entropy that grinds development to a halt.

The difference between leverage and negligence lies in how we manage it.

We are witnessing a new phenomenon in AI-assisted teams: The Principle of Zero-Cost Erosion. Because AI makes adding complexity (patching) nearly free, while refactoring remains expensive (requiring deep thought), teams are defaulting to infinite patching.