Is it really unethical if it benefits the organization? Even if that’s not really the goal.
The blogger acknowledge that the use of the word “unethical” as a hyperbole ton drive engagement.
The real-world issue is that we need to get stakeholders on board with the idea of having to do extra work that is not required to deliver a feature. If you tell a manager that you need to spend a month rewriting a system that was just launched, they will laugh at you.
Technical debt is very real and can complete fuck companies.
Even though the situation you described is unfortunate, I don’t think it has any relationship with the concept of technical debt.
The term “technical debt” conveys the idea that a resource is invested in a way that requires to be repaid later. The whole concept revolves around the idea that taking shortcuts doesn’t eliminate the need to actually do the work to make things then right way. Rushing to a deliverable can leave a mess in your wake, but cleaning up that mess is also work that needs to be done and doesn’t magically go away.
That’s not technical debt. That isn’t even the definition of legacy code. That’s a mess and a whole set of problems, but technical debt ain’t one of it.