tech debt
/tɛk dɛt/
Very CommonThe accumulated cost of shortcuts, bad decisions, and deferred maintenance in a codebase.
Not always bad. Taking on tech debt deliberately for speed is a real and valid strategy. The problem is when it is untracked, unacknowledged, or never paid down. Used broadly to describe any deferred work with compounding consequences.
Real-world examples4 examples
| # | Example | What it means | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | we shipped fast for 2 years and now we're drowning in tech debt. adding one feature takes 3 weeks | Past shortcuts are now compounding into slow, painful development. | x, 2024 |
| 02 | half our sprint is tech debt cleanup. nobody wants to do it but someone has to | The team is spending significant time paying down accumulated problems. | |
| 03 | this is fine, it's a startup, everything is tech debt. the whole company is a TODO comment | Normalizing or joking about pervasive shortcuts in early-stage companies. | x, 2023 |
| 04 | interviewer: what's your biggest weakness? me: i'm responsible for a lot of tech debt at my current job | Honest (or darkly humorous) acknowledgment of contributing to codebase problems. |
Use it when
- Code was written quickly at the expense of quality and now makes the system hard to change.
- Explaining why a feature is taking longer than expected due to legacy issues.
- Describing the accumulated cost of past engineering shortcuts.
- Used broadly outside tech for any deferred work with compounding cost.
Do not use it when
- You mean a specific bug, not a systemic quality problem.Use “bug” instead.
- You mean the code is just complex or hard to understand.Use “complexity” instead.
Variations and related forms
Origin and context
Coined by Ward Cunningham in 1992 to describe the long-term cost of taking shortcuts in software. The term became mainstream through agile development culture and is now widely used beyond software.
- First seen
- 1992
- Confidence
- high
Cite this page
Use this stable URL to reference the entry.
https://slang.fyi/tech-debtUpdated: 2026-08-28License: CC BY 4.0