--- title: Managing Is Actually Technical Debt | daily.dev description: Bad management functions like technical debt — it accumulates interest in the form of waiting time, repeated context, duplicate work, and engineers blocked on... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/managing-is-actually-technical-debt-swyr7moyj twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Managing Is Actually Technical Debt | daily.dev og:description: Bad management functions like technical debt — it accumulates interest in the form of waiting time, repeated context, duplicate work, and engineers blocked on... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/managing-is-actually-technical-debt-swyr7moyj og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Swyr7Moyj.png og:image:alt: Managing Is Actually Technical Debt og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Managing Is Actually Technical Debt **[The Serious CTO](https://daily.dev/sources/seriouscto)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Bad management functions like technical debt — it accumulates interest in the form of waiting time, repeated context, duplicate work, and engineers blocked on decisions that should be made locally. The post argues that management earns its cost only when it reduces uncertainty in the engineering system. Practical remedies include assigning owners and response times to recurring decisions, pushing implementation choices to the lowest safe level, giving temporary steering groups expiry dates, and eliminating meetings or dashboards that produce no decisions or risk calls. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How do I identify if management overhead is slowing down my engineering team? Map where changes waited, who owned each decision, what information was missing, and what would have allowed the choice to stay local. Look for recurring meetings that produce no decision or risk call, dashboards that change no behavior, and managers acting as the default router for every missing product decision — passing questions up and answers back down as another delivery dependency. _Engineering leads auditing their team's delivery flow track patterns like these on daily.dev._ ### What are practical ways to reduce decision bottlenecks in an engineering organization? Give recurring decisions an owner, a response time, and an escalation path. Push implementation choices to the lowest safe level. Assign expiry dates to temporary approvals and steering groups. Cancel any recurring meeting that produces no decision, no risk call, and no change to how work moves — it is a context switch with a logo on it. _Teams restructuring decision ownership find relevant engineering leadership discussions on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Technical Debt Is a Myth Created By Bad Managers](https://daily.dev/posts/technical-debt-is-a-myth-created-by-bad-managers-nko3hfjlg) · DEV · 202 upvotes · 20 comments - [Translate tech debt into business risk](https://daily.dev/posts/translate-tech-debt-into-business-risk-bh7ahgedl) · LeadDev · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [5 strategies for managing technical debt before it’s too late](https://daily.dev/posts/5-strategies-for-managing-technical-debt-before-it-s-too-late-v8uojbatf) · LogRocket · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Forget technical debt](https://daily.dev/posts/forget-technical-debt-vmeltf87i) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#productivity](https://daily.dev/tags/productivity), [#leadership](https://daily.dev/tags/leadership), [#technical-debt](https://daily.dev/tags/technical-debt) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/managing-is-actually-technical-debt-swyr7moyj) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Managing Is Actually Technical Debt","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/managing-is-actually-technical-debt-swyr7moyj","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/managing-is-actually-technical-debt-swyr7moyj"},"datePublished":"2026-08-10T15:16:20.835Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T08:48:46.516Z","description":"Bad management functions like technical debt — it accumulates interest in the form of waiting time, repeated context, duplicate work, and engineers blocked on...","image":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vKdHlasB-nU/sddefault.jpg","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vKdHlasB-nU/sddefault.jpg","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"The Serious CTO","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"The Serious CTO","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--dry9Wxi8--/f_auto/v1710012378/logos/seriouscto","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/seriouscto"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/managing-is-actually-technical-debt-swyr7moyj","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"productivity,leadership,technical-debt","timeRequired":"PT1M","video":{"@type":"VideoObject","name":"Managing Is Actually Technical Debt","description":"Bad management functions like technical debt — it accumulates interest in the form of waiting time, repeated context, duplicate work, and engineers blocked on...","thumbnailUrl":"https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vKdHlasB-nU/sddefault.jpg","uploadDate":"2026-08-10T15:16:20.835Z","duration":"PT1M","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/Swyr7Moyj","embedUrl":"https://www.youtube.com/embed/vKdHlasB-nU"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Serious CTO","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/seriouscto"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Managing Is Actually Technical Debt"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/managing-is-actually-technical-debt-swyr7moyj#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How do I identify if management overhead is slowing down my engineering team?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Map where changes waited, who owned each decision, what information was missing, and what would have allowed the choice to stay local. 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