How much does technical debt affect employee morale? What is the ultimate impact of tech debt — have you ever seen staff leave the organization as a result of it?

Engineering Employee Engagement Strategy & Architecture

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Sr Director of IT Global Infrastructure in Manufacturing9 days ago

Having outdated software and hardware assets can lead to an environment with increased failures that are harder to resolve compared to a more up-to-date setup. Vendor support for older platforms diminishes over time, and hardware becomes nearly impossible to maintain as failures rise and direct replacements become scarce. This situation places a significant burden on IT teams. IT developers, engineers, and analysts prefer working with the latest technology rather than struggling with outdated infrastructure.

This is not just limited to the IT employees, as user groups also experience the strain of using outdated systems. I've heard of business units losing employees because the systems are too difficult to work with. I observed a business user actually quit and walk away the same day as they were tired of the frustration with the business system that they had to work with.

In today's competitive job market, employees facing significant friction with IT systems, whether in IT or on the business side, have the option to leave if the stress becomes too much.

In addition to the risk of losing your current employees, you may have a hard time attracting the best candidates in the future if you have a reputation for not having a progressive approach to your portfolio.

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Director of IT9 days ago

Technical Debt management is crucial to enterprise efficiency and employee morale as outdated solutions bind resources to an outdated technology/system thereby limiting growth/upskill opportunities which may eventually result in staff leaving (especially folks with longer career runway).