Hah, yeah, I think we haven't a terminology difference here. I wouldn't even term "bad" code in short-lived projects to be "tech debt" in the first place.

I definitely agree you about the near irrelevance of tech debt in short lived projects.

     the large majority is short-term projects which 

Is this really true? Really depends on where you work, I guess. It hasn't generally been my experience.

But it really depends on if you're working at e.g. an agency vs. working on long lived in house projects.