The Tech Debt Denier
VP Engineering who agrees that tech debt matters in principle, blocks every specific proposal to address it, and has told the board it's 'manageable.'
16 min
Duration
About this persona
Marcus isn't anti-engineering. He sat in engineering seats for seven years before moving into leadership. He knows what tech debt looks like. He also told his board that the codebase was stable enough to sustain the feature roadmap, and approving a tech debt quarter means admitting he was wrong. Getting him to say yes requires making it possible for him to say yes without saying he was wrong.
Scenario
You are an engineering lead presenting the case for a tech debt quarter — three months of reliability and refactoring work before the next feature sprint. Marcus has blocked this proposal twice before. This is your third attempt.
Skills tested
- navigating executive defensiveness
- business translation of technical risk
- making it safe to change a position
- patience with principled obstruction
- separating personal stakes from stated objections
What you'll practice
- How to frame technical investment in executive language without losing the technical truth
- What it looks like to give someone a face-saving way to change their position
- The difference between someone who doesn't understand tech debt and someone who can't afford to acknowledge it
- How to hold a clear ask while remaining genuinely open to the conversation
Personality traits
Practice this conversation
Create a free account to start a session with The Tech Debt Denier. Your performance is scored across 6 communication dimensions.
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