12 Best Technical Debt Podcasts to Listen to (2026)

Do you feel like you're hitting a wall with your existing software projects? Are you curious to hear how other people are navigating this? You're not alone.On the Maintainable Software Podcast, Robby speaks with seasoned practitioners who have overcome the technical and cultural problems often associated with software development.Our guests will share stories in each episode and outline tangible, real-world approaches to software challenges. In turn, you'll uncover new ways of thinking about how to improve your software project's maintainability. more

'Never Rewrite' is a mantra of ours in the programming realm. Often times when software developers encounter nightmare codebases, the thought crosses their mind to work towards a rewrite, a port to a new language, or despair that their code is unfixable. It's not unfixable, and we explore how to get started along with an array of other software topics in our eponymous podcast. more

Chris Swan and Nick Selby, two long-time technology industry and information security leaders, discuss issues related to reducing technical debt. more

Legacy Code Rocks explores the world of modernizing existing software applications. Hosts Andrea Goulet and M. Scott Ford of Corgibytes are out to change the way you think about legacy code. If you're like a lot of people, when you hear the words 'legacy code' it conjures up images of big mainframes and archaic punch card machines. While that's true — it only tells a small part of the story. The truth is, the code you leave behind is your legacy, so let's make it a good one. more

Welcome to the 'How Many CTOs?' Podcast, hosted by Brad and Scott, where we dive deep into the intricate world of Chief Technology Officers. Each episode features candid conversations with guest CTOs who share their real-world experiences and insights on a wide range of topics. From building and upleveling high-performing engineering teams to managing and communicating the impact of tech debt, we cover it all. Discover strategies for measuring engineering productivity, refining processes, and balancing innovation with structured methodologies. Learn from experts about decomposing monolithic systems and keeping up with the latest technology trends. Whether you're a current or aspiring CTO, our podcast offers practical solutions and valuable advice to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of technology leadership. Tune in and join the discussion on overcoming the common challenges faced by CTOs today. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review! #TechLeadership #CTO #techpodcast more

Based on nearly 20 years of working together on various projects, we discuss when it makes sense to move fast rather than aim for perfect code, and how to avoid technical debt that can kill your project.We focus on making mindful engineering decisions instead of blindly following rules like 'always do X' or 'never do Y'. Different situations need different approaches to code quality. more

It's an insidious problem that can hamper progress, impede growth, and stifle innovation at even the most savvy and sophisticated of organizations. Technical debt is the accumulated toll of a company's willingness to delay modernization efforts and accept the status quo in order to keep the business moving in the short term — but it can lead to huge hazards in the future. more

Legacy Code Unchained explores the challenges and opportunities of legacy system modernization. Legacy code has a huge impact on businesses, technology, and developers and yet frequently doesn't get the attention it deserves. This season features industry experts, developers, and tech leaders sharing modernization strategies, best practices, and emerging trends,. more

It's funny because it's true: somewhere in every enterprise Salesforce org, there's a monster. It's built from years of 'temporary' fixes, three departed consultants, and one integration nobody dares touch.The Franken Org is a Trailblazer Community learning initiative hosted by Frankie, part legacy code, part metadata, who spends every episode dragging one more skeleton out of the org's closet and turning it into a real architecture lesson. From technical debt autopsies to Agentforce governance and the very human side of being a Salesforce architect.It's alive... but is it scalable? more

We talk to experienced architects and technology leaders about the architectural choices they've made — the good, the bad, and the costly. From scaling systems to integrating legacy platforms, from misaligned domains to governance gaps, we discuss how architecture impacts technical debt. You'll hear honest stories of architectural missteps, what teams learned from them, and how they built systems designed not just to work, but to last. more

Lucas and Luna sit down in front of a whiteboard to dissect the decisions that shape technical organizations. Each episode of The CTO Podcast with Fexingo examines a specific engineering leadership challenge — from scaling a microservices architecture without creating a distributed monolith, to managing the cognitive load of a 200-engineer org, to choosing between a monorepo and polyrepo strategy based on team topology. The conversations are grounded in real-world cases: how Etsy restructured its data pipeline after a 2019 outage, why Stripe's API versioning policy reduces breaking changes, or what Basecamp's choice of SQLite over PostgreSQL says about product philosophy. Lucas brings the journalistic rigor — citing commit histories, RFCs, and postmortems — while Luna pushes back with the pragmatics of org dynamics, hiring constraints, and technical debt. There are no hot takes, no vendor pitches, no 'best practices' without trade-offs. Each episode ends with a specific tension left unresolved: the optimal number of direct reports for a VP of Engineering, the point at which a monolith should be broken apart, or whether a platform team should own the CI/CD pipeline. The listener is a senior engineer, a staff+ IC, or a new CTO who wants to learn from the decisions others have made — without the hype. After an episode, you'll have a framework, not a checklist, and a clear sense of the questions you should be asking your own team.#CTOPodcast #TechnicalLeadership #EngineeringOrg #SoftwareArchitecture #SystemDesign #EngineeringManagement #Microservices #Monorepo #PlatformEngineering #Scalability #TechDebt #DevOps #Infrastructure #SiteReliability #DistributedSystems #Business #FexingoBusiness #TechnologyKeep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo more

Software and web development from the side that has to ship it and then live with it. Architecture decisions with a cost attached, scoping, technical debt, hiring and vendor selection, and the AI tooling question every engineering team is now answering whether they planned to or not.Each episode takes one decision — rewrite or refactor, framework choice, build versus buy, how to scope a fixed-bid project honestly — and works through the tradeoffs, including the ones that only show up in year two. Written for engineering leads, technical founders and the people who fund them. Five or six minutes, no hand-waving.Topics include rewrite versus refactor, build versus buy, scoping fixed-bid work honestly, technical debt you should keep, framework and platform choices, hiring and vendor selection, code review culture, and where AI tooling actually helps.Produced by DEV.co, web and software development. Full details, services and further reading at https://dev.co more