Article · 12 min read

Managing Technical Debt

Jacob Kaplan-Moss · jacobian.org Free Intermediate

A Django co creator's practical framing of technical debt as something to budget and manage continuously, not a crisis to panic about. It helps you and your new hire agree on how much time goes to cleaning up inherited agency code versus shipping new features. Read it so the handover does not turn into a months long rewrite that stalls the business.

  • Budget a steady fraction of time for debt rather than big stop the world rewrites
  • Prioritize the debt that actually slows the work you need to do now
  • Debt is a normal cost of shipping, manage it, do not fear it
Open on jacobian.org ↗

The question it answers

  1. When should I stop using an agency and hire my first in-house developer?

Read with it

  1. Battle-tested YC advice on landing your critical first engineering hire, from founders who've done it at scale. It reframes... YC Startup Library Article · Essay How to hire your first engineer (YC Startup Library) Y Combinator (Greg Brockman, Harj Taggar)
  2. Graham wrote this after watching hundreds of early companies fail, so the failure patterns are observed, not theorized. Two of... YC Startup Library Essay · ~20 min read The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups Paul Graham
  3. This gives you the sharpest rule for the build versus buy call: if it is a core business function, build it yourself, and if it... Joel on Software Essay · 10 min read In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome Joel Spolsky
  4. Once no-code has carried you to traction, this is a grounded guide to building the early team you eventually need, including... Lenny's Newsletter Article Hiring your early team Lenny Rachitsky
  5. A deep, practitioner heavy set of guides from operators who built strong technical teams from scratch, useful once you commit... First Round Review Article · long read Hiring engineers First Round Review
  6. Finding a great engineer is only half the battle when everyone is competing for them, and this piece is about the other half:... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · Medium read Convincing engineers to join your team Y Combinator
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →