Real Cost of ‘Quick Fixes’

There’s a saying: ‘Nothing lasts longer than a temporary fix.’ In modern software engineering, this isn’t just a joke - it’s a reality.

Every developer has seen it happen. A "temporary" workaround, written in a rush to meet a deadline, somehow survives multiple refactors, product rewrites, and even company acquisitions. Years later, a new hire asks, "Why do we do it this way?" and the only answer is an awkward silence.

So, how do these quick fixes take root, and why do they refuse to die? Let’s break it down.

‘Temporary’ Illusion: How Workarounds Become Legacy

It always starts with good intentions. Things like,

• We’ll fix it after release

• It’s just a hotfix, we’ll fix it later

• No time to do it the right now, let’s just ship this for now

If we fast-forward two years, “for now” fix is now mission critical component. The original author has left, nobody remember the context, (don’t even ask me about documentation). And the best part ? - That quick fix works. It’s not ideal, but it gets the job done - why take the risk of rewriting it?

Business-Driven Tech Debt Trap

Harsh reality is,

Business sees engineering as a delivery pipeline. If you ask them, they can’t differentiate Engineers and Tech Support folks. What they care is a feature delivery. Features must be shipped, customers must be kept happy and revenue must keep flowing.

In this world, "we need more time to do it properly" sounds like an excuse.

Here’s how tech debt gets baked into the system.

• Short-term gains, long-term pain: Pushing a quick fix today means future devs will spend days debugging it.

• Leadership’s tunnel vision: Product managers often optimize for "What can be shipped this sprint?" not "Will this code survive three years?"

• The cost of refactoring: Cleaning up tech debt takes time and effort, neither of which are easy to justify on a roadmap filled with revenue-driving features.

• No Scope for tech-debt: Sorry, we don’t have time and resource to spend on tech-debt this sprint.

Domino Effect: When One Hack Creates More Problems

Ah, the domino effect – where one "harmless" quick fix triggers a cascade of problems. Every quick fix is like a single Jenga piece removed from a tower—it might hold up, but eventually, the whole thing collapses.

• A small hack to bypass an auth check? Suddenly, you’ve created a security risk.

• A quick database tweak? Now your queries time out under high load.

• That magic number in math equation? Now no one would dare to touch that line of code.

• A quick fix to handle timezones - now leading to miscalculations at 10 different places, affecting 50 downstream systems.

The solution? Sometimes you need to embrace the old engineering wisdom: "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast." Taking time to properly architect might take time initially but it’ll save days of rework and save future resource time and capacity.

Why We Don’t Refactor: The Fear of Breaking Things

Even when engineers recognize a mess, they hesitate to clean it up. Why?

• "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it." When a quick fix is running fine, who wants to take responsibility for touching it?

• Lack of test coverage. No tests? Then even minor changes feel like defusing a bomb blindfolded.

• Knowledge gaps. Developer who wrote it is gone, documentation is non-existent and nobody wants to be the person who breaks production.

This creates an ultimate Paradox: The longer a bad fix survives, the more people fear replacing it. Over time, that workaround isn’t just tolerated, instead it becomes "the way things are done."

Decision-Making Framework: When Quick Actually Means Quick

Let's be real – sometimes a quick fix is genuinely the right choice. The trick is knowing when you're making a tactical decision versus when you're just digging tomorrow's hole deeper. Here's how to tell the difference:

It’s probably okay when:

• Fix is truly isolated and won't interact with other systems

• You have a concrete plan and timeline for the proper solution

• Business impact of waiting outweighs the technical debt

• You create JIRA ticket in backlog to fix that quick fix before implementing

It’s probably NOT okay when:

• It's your third "emergency" fix this month

• Fix involves hard-coding values at multiple places in your code

• You catch yourself saying "nobody will notice if we just..."

• Proper solution keeps getting pushed back sprint after sprint

Escaping the Quick Fix Mindset

Breaking free from quick-fix cycle isn’t just about technical solution, but it’s about changing mindset and process.

Recognize tech debt early

• If something feels hacky, acknowledge it. Write it down. Create a JIRA ticket and put it in backlog same moment you say, "we’ll fix it later"

Use feature flags & incremental refactoring

• Tag all the deliverables, even code fixes. Instead of rewriting everything at once, break down improvements into manageable changes.

Advocate for long-term thinking

• Bring the cultural change. Leadership might resist, but framing refactoring as a cost-saving measure can help. Show them impact (of doing so).

• Build a culture that values long-term stability as much as short-term solutions.

Document decisions and assumptions

• A simple README explaining why a temporary fix was implemented can prevent future devs from blindly accepting it as the final solution.

Closing Thoughts

In all honesty, the truth is some quick fixes are necessary. But when temporary solutions become permanent architecture, the real cost is paid in future headaches, lost time and brittle systems.

Apology for this brief closing thoughts as I need to go check on that "temporary" CRON job I set up in 2020... 🤞 

Until next time, Cheers

Have you ever been haunted by a so-called 'temporary' fix? Share your experiences and war stories about quick fixes! Join the conversation on LinkedIn and 𝕏 

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Thanks for reading,
Kelvin
TechParadox.dev