Hi Team,
இரவு வணக்கம் (iravu vaNakkam), Buenas Noches, and Good Evening from New York City!
I’ll be sharing a thought I had.
A Thought 💭
Last week, my friend from Chicago surprised me with a visit.
He’s a manager in Tech. He frames prioritizing work on technical debt to the Product Team as paying the engineering team insurance premiums against technical failure.
The entire value proposition of insurance is to ensure that you don’t lose what you already have.
“You have the app now but you might not if you don’t pay the premiums”.
We talk about how “technical debt” grows as you don’t pay it down. But humans have a tough time conceptualizing compound exponential growth. Humans are more tuned to loss aversion.
This reframe maps an abstract concept to perceived loss. That’s powerful.
My friend is a 33 year old CTO of a publicly traded company.
I feel like he’s onto something.
I'd love to hear any feelings you felt while reading this and until next time - be easy.
With Love,
Janahan
P.S. If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading the 23rd edition of the TTT Newsletter. Also, your hair looks great today :)