Technical debt. There's a time and place for it, but as financial debt you'll have to pay it back, with interests.
The best thing about the term, is that not technical people know and understand how debt works, so they can make a more or less informed decision and don't get that much surprised in the future when something need a big refactoring :)
That is exactly right. One the most interesting things I heard from a departing Google engineer was that he was declaring 'technical bankruptcy.' He was so fed up with hacking things together to make them work and not doing them 'right' that he just couldn't take it any more. So much of the way we work as engineers has analogs in finance that it stuns me some times.
The best thing about the term, is that not technical people know and understand how debt works, so they can make a more or less informed decision and don't get that much surprised in the future when something need a big refactoring :)