Development

Tech debt nomads and slash-and-burn development

Tech debt nomadism leads to recurring cycles of inefficiency. It negatively impacts systems, organizations, and developers over time.

Einar Høst

Einar Høst

Einar W. Høst is an architect and developer at Norkart. He enjoys collaborative modelling, API design and computer programming. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Oslo.

Many developers are tech debt nomads. When starting in a new role, we are righteously indignant about the shortcomings of existing solutions, preferring to burn them to the ground and start anew. A couple of years down the road, when the consequences of our own choices start to make themselves manifest and progress slows down, we find it's time to move on. To replace us come other tech debt nomads, and the process repeats itself. What fuels this process? And what are the effects on the systems we build? On the organizations that own them? On us?