My perspective, as someone who worked for JPMorgan in technology for 8 years, and for several other banks, is that JPMorgan is way above most other banks in the quality of their systems and their dev teams.
Likewise the top management. Jamie Dimon is very impressive. You don't get to stay CEO of a bank with 250,000 employees for more than 20 years without being seriously good at it, very consistently.
It is completely contrary to my own feeling that debt is created by external pressure to deliver too fast. I can see why that would create perverse incentives should a project manager make a similar observation.
Great art breaks constraints, but there is this symbiotic relationship where art is nothing without constraints. I'm starting to think there are similarities with other creative endeavours too, which I absolutely consider programming to be.
Not sure where I wanted to go with this, just reflecting on your rant with one of my own.
If you write the minimum amount to validate the business need, you have minimum debt. :)
Mega big banks in the USA suffer from tech debt A LOT. The number one reason for operation disruptions is software errors, and with a large difference to reasons 2-3-4.
An additional point could be that large USA banks have a higher (imho) ratio of sociopaths in their ranks. Perhaps the sociopaths lost the ability to whip their minions, and the minions started working under normal/human speeds 40h a week instead of 60-70h per week that is the typical expected work while under the influence of a sociopathic boss.
Also lets not forget that JP Morgan CEO is THIS guy: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2019/apr/11/jp-mor...
I think that, although imperfect metric, the bottom line will speak of performance. I take it that there are multiple criteria that affect the bottom line, but the management of JPM cannot be trusted, again, sorry for repeating, is not the most decent in the planet.
Edit: apologies for the rant-y beat down of the mega-big US banks, but yeah.. not sorry really.