Is your team constantly firefighting instead of innovating? The culprit is likely technical debt, a silent drag on productivity that costs the industry over $85 billion a year. But what if we've been thinking about it all wrong?

In this episode, we dismantle the myth that you have to choose between speed and quality. Drawing on insights from industry leaders like Google, Shopify, and others, we provide a practical playbook for engineering managers, SREs, and security leaders to transform debt management from a costly chore into a strategic advantage.

Join us as we cover:

• The true cost of unmanaged debt and how to articulate it to business leaders.
• Moving beyond "messy code" with Martin Fowler's Technical Debt Quadrant.
• How Google's DORA metrics prove that stability and speed are two sides of the same coin.
• Actionable strategies you can implement tomorrow, including Shopify's "25% Rule" and the "Boy Scout Rule."
• Advanced plays for SRE and Security teams using SLOs, Error Budgets, and "Shift Left" automation.

Stop being a debt collector and start being an innovation enabler. This episode shows you how.