Every codebase has skeletons in the closet. You know exactly where they are. That module nobody wants to touch. The database migration that “worked” but left three orphaned tables. The authentication flow that was built as a temporary solution eighteen months ago and is now load-bearing infrastructure. You know where all the bodies are buried because you helped bury some of them.
The engineers know too. They bring it up in retros. They mention it in 1:1s. They write tickets that sit in the backlog with labels like “tech-debt” and “cleanup” and “please-for-the-love-of-god.” And nothing happens, because there’s always another feature, another deadline, another client request that takes priority.
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