It will only be joke once our profession unionizes. Until then, nope, not a joke. It's actually very good career advice.

I'm in a union but actually not sure how that is relevant. I'm in Sweden, maybe things are different.

I have never worked with a PM who hasn't understood the concept of technical debt though. It sounds like a bad career move to work with such a person. Ignoring technical debt until development slows down to a crawl is a good idea? I don't buy it. My advice would be to either try to fix the issue (both the PM and the technical debt) immediately or find a new job.

In my experience, managers do understand the concept of technical debt, in theory. They just don't think we should be actually addressing it right now, because something else is more urgent. And there is always something more urgent.

That was the thing with XP and refactoring and a handful of other techniques. It was a form of unionizing. Solidarity goes a long way toward changing norms. If I can’t just ask another developer until I get the answer I want, then it’s either fire everyone or accept that This is How We Do Things.

I didn't intend it as a joke. Maybe at a developer-friendly company it could be viewed as a joke.