My mistake: excellence too early

I'll admit it. I was guilty of over-engineering early systems.

I obsessed over abstractions, design patterns, and pristine code long before the business needed that level of polish.

It felt like excellence.

In reality, it slowed us down. I spent weeks making something elegant when we could have shipped a rougher version and tested the market. The business didn't get healthier. The product didn't get stronger. We just burned cycles.

Avoiding debt completely was its own kind of debt. Invisible, but just as costly.

When technical debt is actually an asset

Debt buys speed. It lets you:

• Ship features faster
• Run experiments you would never justify if they took six months
• Gather customer feedback while it still matters

The trap is thinking "clean code now" is always better. Sometimes what your team really needs is velocity, not purity.

The question isn't whether to take on debt. It's whether you are taking on debt that expands future options or collapses them.

A framework CFOs already understand

CFOs deal with this every day. They don't avoid financial debt. They manage it. They ask:

• What is the principal? (the shortcut we are taking)
• What is the interest? (the cost of carrying it forward: slower dev, bugs, context loss)
• What is the risk of default? (the moment the debt cripples us)

Once I started thinking about technical debt this way, conversations across the business got a lot easier. Suddenly engineering wasn't arguing about code quality. We were making trade-offs in the same language everyone already uses.

My rule of thumb:

1. What is the acceleration benefit?
2. What is the interest cost over time?
3. What is the default risk if we ignore it?

If you can't answer those, you are not making a strategic choice. You are just gambling.

Building a debt budget

Here's where many teams get it wrong. They treat debt like a dirty secret.

The better approach is to build a budget.

• Cap it. Agree on a percentage of roadmap time to service debt.
• Make it visible. Dashboards, recurring reviews, burn-down tracking.
• Pay it down intentionally. Don't wait for a crisis. Plan repayment when the business can afford it.

Once I shifted from avoiding all debt to budgeting for it, alignment with product and finance became smoother. Engineers stopped feeling guilty. The business stopped being surprised.

Why this matters more in 2025 and beyond

AI is making it easier than ever to ship features at breakneck speed. That means debt will pile up even faster.

If you are still clinging to the fantasy of a debt-free codebase, you are already behind.

The winners will not be the cleanest teams. They will be the most debt-smart.

The goal isn't purity. It's progress.

Excellence too early is just another form of debt.

So ask yourself:

• Where are you over-engineering problems you don't yet have?
• Do you know your team's "interest rate" on debt?
• What would a healthy debt budget look like at your company?