Yes. Technical debt rendered it difficult to create features, and difficult to hire. The project dragged on as engineers came, tried to refactor and then left. I didn't stay.
My understanding is that it was never released, so all of the money the company put into the project was wasted.
This is maybe different from what people normally consider 'technical debt'. I don't mean just code aesthetics but also bugs, redundant code, and bad abstractions.
We have lots of tech debt (we are gradually paying it down), but we keep engineers for a loooong time (they basically don't leave unless they move) because of the social aspects of our team. A bunch of really nice, helpful people, who really want to make things better but are willing to balance "good" with "practical".
My understanding is that it was never released, so all of the money the company put into the project was wasted.
This is maybe different from what people normally consider 'technical debt'. I don't mean just code aesthetics but also bugs, redundant code, and bad abstractions.