Imagine you’re building a home. Maybe you have the time and experience to build the house yourself, but many parts of this project will be handed off to people who specialize… in designing the structure and floor plan, in laying the foundation, setting up the walls, laying electrical, plumbing, HVAC, and so on.<p>You could do this as fast as possible without considering the costs… and by the end of it, maybe you realize now you can’t afford the specific hardwood floors or baseboards you wanted because you’re out of money. Or you decided to go with the expensive back splash in your kitchen, but now you’ll have to settle for cheaper windows that don’t sufficient block out road noise - impacting your quality of life when you can’t sleep at night.<p>Maybe you went with the lowest bidder for some of the electrical work, and now the electrical sockets are literally lose and the new TV you plugged in gets burned after you plug it into the outlet.<p>Tech debt is when you make decisions, often deliberately but sometimes without thinking through, that impact not just the house immediately when you move in, but also your ability to maintain and enjoy your new house afterwards.<p>We cut corners on the plumbing… man the septic system is now backed up and leaking out in the back yard. But we had to move into the house by a certain date and that was the main thing we optimized for over all else, and so here we are.<p>At this point, you’re thinking - well, all of this doesn’t sound THAT made. True.<p>Imagine that to fix the electrical problems, you now have to first remove all the cabinets from the kitchen and take apart the sink. Wait… that doesn’t make sense. How could it be that the kitchen sink and cabinets are so tightly coupled with the electrical system?<p>Now imagine that to fix the septic tank issue, you have to dig up the entire backyard and the garage. Yikes!<p>And for some reason, the plumbing in the bedroom is having additional problems. To fix it, we actually have to take down load bearing walls in the bathroom and the living room… while people continue to live in the house.<p>And that is tech debt. We were actually scheduling a party for next week. We can’t have the party now. Or if we do, maybe we can invite half the guests.<p>And sonny wanted to play drums. But the new windows are shit and don’t block noise. We bought a house so we wouldn’t have to worry about noise bother apartment neighbors, but with this construction, the neighbors are equally as likely to call cops and get the HOA on us.