Technical Debt Is a Product Decision

Tech debt is rarely an engineering surprise. It is the residue of tradeoffs someone accepted under pressure: ship now, cut scope, defer the hard path, say yes to a partner deadline. Product owns those choices even when they were implicit or invisible on a slide. Pretending debt is “their problem” is how teams slow down and blame each other instead of the original bargain. Own the tradeoff that created the shortcut, and you can sequence paydown like any other bet. Ignore that lineage, and you will fight the same fire every quarter.