Ironically, some of the worst tech debt I’ve ever dealt with has been because the initial implementation was an overengineered disaster by an dev who thought they were solving all possible problems before we really understood what all possible problems are.

“Zero tech debt” is an impossibility. The most elegant solutions incur some kind of tech debt, it’s just less than others. More realistic than “zero tech debt” is a continuing dedication to addressing tech debt combined with using implementations that minimize “one way doors”.