However, for every success story, there are thousands of companies struggling with unfixable codebases.
Do it right or don't do it. There's no "we'll fix it later" in production.
The first statement is largely true, but the second one is the wrong lesson to take from it.
Most startups accumulate tech debt due to resource constraints: time, budget, people. If they followed “do it right or don’t do it”, they wouldn’t exist.
What’s needed is conscious management of that tech debt. Good tech management understands that. As soon as it’s feasible to do it, you need to start devoting resources to addressing tech debt. “We can’t afford downtime to refactor” is what a manager who doesn’t understand that says.
The “companies struggling with unfixable codebases” are the ones that didn’t try to manage their tech debt until it was too late.
Comments
The first statement is largely true, but the second one is the wrong lesson to take from it.
Most startups accumulate tech debt due to resource constraints: time, budget, people. If they followed “do it right or don’t do it”, they wouldn’t exist.
What’s needed is conscious management of that tech debt. Good tech management understands that. As soon as it’s feasible to do it, you need to start devoting resources to addressing tech debt. “We can’t afford downtime to refactor” is what a manager who doesn’t understand that says.
The “companies struggling with unfixable codebases” are the ones that didn’t try to manage their tech debt until it was too late.