..and most people problems are communication problems.

Calling them 'people problem' is a convenient catch-all that lacks enough nuance to be a useful statement. What constitutes good communication? Are there cross purposes?

> Non-technical people do not intuitively understand the level of effort required or the need for tech debt cleanup; it must be communicated effectively by engineering - in both initial estimates & project updates. Unless leadership has an engineering background, the value of the technical debt work likely needs to be quantified and shown as business value.

The engineer will typically say that the communication needed is technical, but in fact the language that leadership works with is usually non-technical, so the translation into this field is essential. We do not need more engineers, we need engineer who know how to translate the details.

I realise that, here on HN, most will probably take the side of the rational technologist, but this is a self-validating cycle that can identify the issue, but cannot solve it.

IMO, we need more generalists that can speak both languages. I have worked hard to try and be that person, but it turns out that almost no-one wants to hire this cross-discipline communicator, so there's a good chance that I'm wrong about all of this.