> If you're good you can keep a lid on tech debt in the face of rapidly changing requirements. If you suck at it, well... you can't.
Every drop of tech debt (aside from AI slop) I have ever been a part of has manifested simply because some manager or executive made the decision to sacrifice quality for short-term speed. Sometimes this looks like an unskilled developers producing something that management won't let you fix. Sometimes it's a completely unrealistic deadline that requires extreme measures to meet. If you are able to keep a lid on tech debug in the face of rapidly changing requirements, it likely means that you have enough slack in your job to do so.
Asking permission to fix tech debt is a rookie mistake. You need to bake the fixes into the ticket.
Half of my job as a lead is to cajole, threaten and convince juniors into spending 5 days on a ticket to do it properly rather than spending 2 in order to get brownie points for "looking" productive.
Ive had more than one call where the junior says "we don't have time for that" and I have to call in the PM to let them know that it's OK, we do.
There are environments where management put so much pressure on you that you can't help but deliver crap but not everywhere has to be like that.