And my core point is that most companies are shit shows. Employees know what bullet points they should have to minimize downside risk, but struggle with how to get those done while also minimizing upside risk.
In a world of scarcity, just keep communicating the tech debt. Maybe occasionally propose a project to address it.
Some people actually want to spend their time contributing to something meaningful. It also sounds like OP is worried executive incompetence might affect his job security.
My point is that even “something meaningful” comes with tech debt. It’s like that at my current place.
Too many people get “grass is greener” syndrome and think that there is some magical company somewhere which gives everyone plenty of time to refactor everything and fix all of the tech debt and execs make fantastic business risk decisions which always benefit the employee. In a world of scarcity, that practically never happens.
Just weigh your options in the market. If it’s worth staying where you are, just realize that the employee is not responsible for making business risk decisions, only responsible for sufficiently informing those who do of the facts.
You're still assuming that OP, or anyone else, has the same values as you. As I said, some people want to work on something meaningful, or see the writing on the wall and want to increase their job security. It's not about the grass being greener. And sometimes, it is greener, and the only way you find out is by trying something new.
The secret is to tie the tech debt to something that business wants. If that can’t be done then you have wonder how important it really is to address the debt.
I'm not sure if its a secret but its certainly one of the most practical ways to address technical debt.
Unfortunately we're at stage they will outright ignore what they're told, and then blame engineers for not being able to do what they said they couldn't do from the start. They refuse to acknowledge their impact on creating the tech debt in the first place by poor planning and wishful but impractical timelines, so proving to them we need to tackle any part of it is a struggle without letting things degrade to the point a real customer with significant money on the line is upset enough by the state of things to tackle it.
Which ultimately means we're at the horribly dysfunctional stage of management/company growth, the question is does it continue to get worse or does the CEO eventually learn and seriously look at the effectiveness of the VP levels and make changes...
