Many developers evoke the mischievous spirit and day-to-day burden of technical debt to explain the misfortunes and troubles of their codebase and delivery. While unmanaged technical debt weighs down many codebases and exerts drag on their schedules, it is more often an effect than a cause.

In this talk, we will look at what is and is not meant by technical debt — and other metaphors — with a view to properly attributing the root and recurring cause as technical neglect rather than technical debt. Without seeing technical neglect for what it is, we will continue to misattribute our problems to an effect rather than a cause.