Debts, Tech and Otherwise

Feels like we're stretching the metaphor when we apply it to things that won't necessarily compound in complexity or time required to fix it. This is often the case with technical stuff because things can depend on one another, but if you drop a bad process step, the time saved is probably linear since rarely do other teams need to change their process because you changed yours.

Debt is scary as a metaphor because the interest compounds and the bank can repo things, but if you just owe a guy $10, he's not gonna come after you years later with a $300,000 bill. Non-compounding bad decisions are "you owe a guy $X" while the compounding ones are "debt".

Maybe we should use "fees" and "debts" to differentiate these.

> Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money borrowed or otherwise withheld from another party, the creditor.

> The term can also be used metaphorically to cover moral obligations and other interactions not based on a monetary value. For example, in Western cultures, a person who has been helped by a second person is sometimes said to owe a "debt of gratitude" to the second person.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt

"debt" means owing something to someone. non-compounding debt is still debt. i don't pay back a "debt of gratitude" with compound interest. i also don't pay back friends I owe money to for a restaurant bill with compound interest, even though i was in debt with them when they covered my part of the bill.

compounding/non-compounding is fine. don't over-complicate it.