Musings on Tech Debt Tech debt likens less than ideal technical implementations to financial debt. The argument goes that failing to restructure code in light of new knowledge is like leaving a balance on a credit card. Teams that neglect restructuring their code will have reduced velocity, and eventually most work will be spent coping with cruft instead of delivering new features. Experienced developers have likely worked on a project where a seemingly simple task, ends up taking much longer than it should.