That's an excellent question. It depends, to some extent, on the question if a solution with less technical debt would've been possible at all.
Often, the "turds" were either the only thing possible at the time, or the savings there opened up other opportunities. Not always - sometimes the "cost savers" simply insist on digging a grave for the project.
But that's the main distinction - if it's bad and yet lives on, there has to be value in it. No company spends money on something that doesn't provide value. I suppose what you are arguing is that the product doesn't necessarily provide the maximum value possible. But that's a pretty high bar to meet.
There's always a "good enough". In a perfect world, engineering and product "good enough" coincide. If only one is good enough, you get either a badly engineered financial success, or a financially disastrous monument to engineering.
All other things being equal, only the former lives on. And hence, "turds live on" - and make money, and pay paychecks. And if their maintenance costs exceed their revenue, they usually get shut down.
(I'm deliberately ignoring all projects that can afford to ignore money. The rules are different there.)
Plenty of companies spend money on things that provide no value - which is why msrketing is a thing.
I’ve sometimes wondered - not entirely ironically - if development teams would be understood as a revenue source instead of a cost if they hired their own micro-marketing sub-team to do internal marketing to management.
Often, the "turds" were either the only thing possible at the time, or the savings there opened up other opportunities. Not always - sometimes the "cost savers" simply insist on digging a grave for the project.
But that's the main distinction - if it's bad and yet lives on, there has to be value in it. No company spends money on something that doesn't provide value. I suppose what you are arguing is that the product doesn't necessarily provide the maximum value possible. But that's a pretty high bar to meet.
There's always a "good enough". In a perfect world, engineering and product "good enough" coincide. If only one is good enough, you get either a badly engineered financial success, or a financially disastrous monument to engineering.
All other things being equal, only the former lives on. And hence, "turds live on" - and make money, and pay paychecks. And if their maintenance costs exceed their revenue, they usually get shut down.
(I'm deliberately ignoring all projects that can afford to ignore money. The rules are different there.)