The True Cost of "Fast and Cheap": Understanding Technical Debt
Imagine building a skyscraper. You want to save money, so you skip the geological survey and build the foundation with cheap concrete. It looks fine for the first 5 floors.
Then you add the 6th floor, and the building cracks.
What is Technical Debt?
In software, Technical Debt happens when you choose the easy solution now instead of the better approach that would take longer.
It’s okay to have some debt (like a mortgage) to move fast and release an MVP. But if you don’t pay the interest (refactoring), you go bankrupt.
Signs High Technical Debt is Killing Your Company:
- Fragility: You fix one bug, and two more appear.
- Velocity Drop: Adding a simple feature takes weeks instead of days.
- Developer Misery: Your team hates touching the codebase. Talent leaves.
The Glarium Standard
We refuse to ship bad code. We might not be the cheapest option on Upwork, but we build solid foundations.
- Automated Testing: We write code that tests our code.
- Documentation: We don’t keep secrets. Everything is documented so any developer can pick it up.
- Scalability: We design for 100x growth, even if you are at 1x today.
FAQ: Engineering Quality
Q: Can’t we just fix the code later? A: You can, but it costs exponentially more. Fixing a bug in production costs 100x more than fixing it during design.
Q: What is Refactoring? A: It’s restructuring existing code without changing its external behavior. It’s like cleaning the kitchen so you can cook the next meal faster.
Conclusion
Cheap code is a loan with 50% interest rate. At Glarium, we help you invest, not borrow.
