I have a closet in the basement where when I did the vinyl plank floor, I ran out so the planks don't quite go to the back of the closet all the way. Problem? Yes? A bit ugly? Yes. But in reality the problem is 100% of the time covered by boxes and anyway I can live a happy life in this house for decades and not be affected. That's 0% tech debt.
On the other hand if my gutters are clogged, there's interest on that because the longer I wait the costlier it will be to deal with since clogged gutters can lead to basement leaks or gutters themselves detaching. Or, if my stoop is broken, that's not just an eye sore but I keep tripping on it, the faster I fix it the sooner I stop tripping. That's a high-interest debt that should be fixed asap.
In engineering, a high-rate debt could be some architectural thing that slows down the development of every single feature. You want to quickly pause features to pay this down so everything can move faster. On the other hand, some file that you never touch having some shitty code or lots of TODOs may be a very low interest debt since in practice you never touch it or are otherwise not bothered by it other than knowing that it's ugly - like my closet floor.
Engineers make two mistakes around this - fixing zero-interest debt when there's more important things to do on one hand. On the other hand, when they say "oh, product management/leadership didn't sponsor our tech debt fixing" - it's often because we fail to articulate the real cost of that problem - explaining that it's high rate and how it's costing you.
what's amazing is that I'm apparently in debt while owing absolutely nothing to anyone.
When you say something like "0% tech debt" seriously, do you ever stop and wonder if maybe you're off-base?
Debt needs to be serviced, if you don't need to service it, it's not debt.
What next, that feature that hasn't been implemented yet is 0% tech debt?
The main point to take away is that much of what is colloquially called tech debt does not need to be dealt with on any time horizon, while some does - and being able to distinguish between the two types is key. Were you able to get that much out of this?
And then to make the analogy work for you again - my closet IS a form of tech debt and I insist that it's "0% debt". For example, if I am going to sell the house, it might be the case that having this flawed floor would cause me to get lower offers. So I might chose to deal with this issue at some point, but there's no reason to deal with it any sooner (analogous to not being in the rush to pay off a zero-interest loan)
If the porcelain top on my toilet breaks, I'm not in debt because I choose not to replace it.
now, I can run around and tell everyone my toilet is now causing me to have 0% debt because I have a right to say whatever I want, but words have meaning and me saying it doesn't make it so anymore than me claiming the earth is cheese has any effect on whether or not it is. Unless of course by cheese I really mean iron when I say cheese.
you do know what "tech debt" is, right? In your metaphor, your top may have 0% debt because only you use the bathroom and no one cares, or it has a potentially high debt in that you receive more germs from your bathroom and get more sick, costing you money to buy medicine to keep you not sick. The debt is objective but we live in a world where finding that objective measure is infeasible.
to use your cheese metaphor, it's more like boldly claiming the earth is 35% iron. it's something you can quickly google and is acceptable through decades of study, but it also wouldn't be surprising if better tooling and measurements later on specify "it's actually 33.42% iron". Important for a geologist, splitting hairs for a casual audience.
We are very much a casual audience, and splitting hairs over a metaphor isn't that productive.
There is no business leader on this earth that is going to agree with 0 debt is debt. Or that choosing not to do a thing or pay for a thing implies debt.
And it gets even worse when you take it to its logical conclusion. Choosing not to fix something is apparently debt. So then if you take out a loan to fix it it's also debt?
What the poster meant is it doesn't always harm anything to leave something unfinished or imperfect. Which is true, but then they tried to squeeze "technical debt" into that and went off the rails.
words have meanings for a reason.