I understand tech debt. But you can't just handwave all tech debt as 'it just happens, get used to it'. It's debt. You're supposed to pay it back at some point, and automotive/industrial/embedded is really, really bad at it, forever stuck in a 'it works, ship it' mentality.

If you're never paying back your tech debt, it's not tech debt. It's just poor software engineering practices.

You can't shut the line down. At best you have a week off for Christmas.