Is “Investing in improving structure” better than “Paying off technical debt”?
The whole technical debt discussion often makes me wonder if there's a fundamental distrust (or even disrespect) of software engineers as domain experts.Do people in other professions have the same issues? If the salespeople say this thing must be done in this particular way, or if the lawyers say this thing must be done in this particular way, are they questioned and overridden by their managers? I honestly don't know; it feels like software engineers are given a special level of distrust but it just might be that I'm perceiving that because I haven't experienced the other jobs.FWIW where I currently work, we have an amazing middle-manager / product owner who has to fight the same battles with upper management with regards to process improvement and technical debt.  She gets it, but has to fight the same battles we do.  Sales and C-level want everything now with as little investment as possible.... I wonder if I just answered my own question?