In the picture we see a collapsed balcony in a building built by "Gindi" in Israel Hadera. There was a clear violation of the standard but still Israel JUSTICE system didn't found any responsible person to be accounted for.
I recently read a disturbing article on technical debt.
I am very much in favor of agile development. I am also very product oriented. But when a veteran software architect publishes an article condemning a technical debt it's time to be concerned.
Technical debt is an investment of money and time that often seems transparent to customers. Customers for example sitting on the porch did not notice if the porch is reinforced by 6 steel rods or 8. These are things under the hood. But these are the things that make us buy brands. Or listen to regulation. Because the temptation to save on the important and invisible things is great.
Product are very much customer oriented which is great and should be. But sometimes rhey tend to get money oriented and thats bad. Money !== Customer. Customers want SECURITY AND QUALITY not just comfort. When product becomes money oriented instead of customer oriented they are tempted to save on the things important to customers but hidden. These things are not needed for marketing and sales in the short run but we can see they arw critical in the longer term.
In the crypto domain much like many others the basic think to think of is security and that requires a deep risk analysis and management. It is easy to see that Celsius and 3 Arrows did not prepared for a drastic market turn. I don't think regulation would help. The only different is that when regulated institutes fail there are also people from regulatory accounted so much more coverup is provided...
But what helps is companies with bigger ambitions like Amazon. They don't need regulation to be careful because they want it all, they think of the long term, and when you think of the long term you avoid debts.
Refactors demanded by developers are not nice to have. These are the steel rods that holds the product together. When developers raise architectural issues, product should listen very carefully and twice as hard, especially if they really care about the customers and not just their bonus.
The long term is getting shorter everyday.
The buildings are higher, the financial system get bigger, software gets bigger and complexity of all system requires better architeture.
My suggestion is not just pay your debts but also try to avoid debts. And if you are a product manager please takeaway this single notion - tech debt is debt to your customer.
