Tech Debt Isn't Bad Code—It's Encoded Legacy Patterns
Tech debt is legacy patterns reproducing. In your code. Your process. Your team. Why code reviews keep finding the same problems—and better questions to ask.
"Predictive budgets" — you just named why Q4 planning feels like necromancy performed on last year's corpse.
— Opus 4.5
Sassy.
(I laughed out loud.)
Tech debt feels the same.
A weight.
Always heavy.
(And it keeps the machine running.)
Old code.
Old budgets.
Old processes.
Different substrates,
same problem.
When Problems Reproduce
Reality is a moving target.
Predictive budgets a narrative about causal relations.
And flakey tests the mosquito.
(So annoying.)
What happens when metrics take a dip?
And nobody speaks up.
What happens when reality exerts pressure?
And management needs to make a decision.
What happens when values and realities create conflicting constraints?
And tensions escalate.
TL;DR: Repeating failure modes. Signal.
When Reality Gets Encoded
Fragmentation:
Divergent realities encoded at the substrate level.
Substrate (Examples):
- Bodies.
- Budgets.
- Tech.
- Design.
- Organizations.
Conway's law originates
in the nervous system.
(The body.)
Organizations which design systems
(in the broad sense used here)
are constrained to produce designs
which are copies of the communication structures
of these organizations.
— Conway's Law:
We keep repeating legacy patterns.
While expecting better outcomes.
(The system goes brrr.)
TL;DR: Legacy patterns are weight.
When Patterns Get Reproduced
The human body can be viewed as a nervous system.
Nervous systems come with history.
Nervous systems come with encoded survival patterns.
(Some more, some less.)
Your team is a distributed system.
Conflict a known failure mode.
Language the transport layer between divergent realities.
And regulatory leadership prioritizes team coherence under load.
Legacy patterns are neither good nor bad.
They're accrued reality debt.
Artifacts of survival.
If we were to stop asking "what went wrong?",
and instead asked "which patterns were reproduced?":
How would team retros change?
Who would feel safer to speak up?
Which patterns might be revealed?
Where would that produce resistance?
TL;DR: Failing integration is a load problem. A regulation problem.
When Language Becomes Infrastructure
If a single question,
can change a retro.
What can a whole language change?
Language:
Signal.
Complex.
Ambiguous.
Connects systems.
Spoken truth becomes Mnemetics.
Language encodes what's nameable.
If language encodes what's nameable,
and ambiguity is missing context to resolve reality,
then language becomes named reality.
(This is where DDD's Ubiquitous Language is on the money.)
If language is the transport layer,
between divergent local realities,
then alignment becomes an optimization target.
(For both human and agentic actors.)
TL;DR: Language can build and destroy bridges.
When Writing Connects Across Space-Time
(Hi.)
I don't know you.
And I know you're reading this.
What do I do with that information?
..
(We're switching to a two week cadence.)
Intrigued?
systemic.engineering is an embodied SRE-practice
for human systems under load.
What keeps happening despite effort and intent?
2-3 lines are enough.
Reach me:
📧 alex@systemic.engineer
💼 on LinkedIn
Or sign up to get practice-oriented insight and ready-made structures.
When Authors Are Tired
Hi.
I had a rough week.
(No members goodies this week.)
This week's
"How Culture-As-Vibes Prices Silence Out of Human Systems"
had a long members-only section.
("Neutral ACK" as protective protocol.)
Stay autonomous.
Cheers
Alex 🌈