That’s the whole idea behind “technical debt”, a phrase programmer Ward Cunningham coined more than 30 years ago and the smartest bit of financial language software ever borrowed. How to spot itYou can read a company’s technical debt in its symptoms long before anyone says the words. A leadership problem, not an engineering oneTechnical debt is a leadership problem wearing an engineering costume. Taking on technical debt gets you promoted. The final bill for technical debt is rarely paid by the company alone.