Every engineer knows what tech debt is. You take a shortcut to hit a date, you tell yourself you'll come back to it, and then you don't. Six months later that shortcut is the reason a two-day feature takes two weeks.
Managers do the exact same thing with people, we just don't have a name for it. I've started calling it people debt.
People debt is the feedback you didn't give. It's the coaching conversation you pushed to next week because the sprint was on fire, or the small habit you noticed in March, decided wasnt worth bringing up, and are now writing about in a performance review in December. Each one feels cheap at the time. Skipping a hard conversation saves you twenty awkward minutes. But just like tech debt, it compounds.
How it compounds
A missed piece of feedback doesn't stay small. Someone who rushes code reviews keeps rushing them, and now two newer engineers have learned that's how reviews work here. Someone who goes quiet in planning stays quiet, and a year later you're wondering why they never grew into the senior role you had in mind for them, when nobody ever told them what was missing.
The interest shows up in places you don't expect. Rework. Other people on the team picking up the slack and getting resentful about it. A review cycle where someone hears a concern for the first time and (fairly) feels blindsided. Worst case it ends in a performance plan for something that could have been a five-minute conversation a year earlier.
The longer you wait, the harder the conversation gets too. "Hey, that last PR felt rushed" is easy to say. "This has been a pattern for a year" is a much worse conversation for both of you.
Why we take it on
Mostly because nobody sees it. Tech debt eventually shows up in a slow build or an incident. People debt doesn't page anyone. When the week gets busy, the delivery work wins because someone is asking about it, and the coaching slides another week.
It's also uncomfortable. I would rather fix a flaky test than tell someone their standup updates are hard to follow, and I know I'm not the only one.
Paying it down
Willpower won't fix this. What works is the same thing that works for tech debt: put it in the system so it happens whether you feel like it or not.
Keep a running file on each person. Wins, concerns, things to coach. I've written about how I use Notion to manage people, and this is a big reason that setup exists. If it's written down, it can't quietly disappear.
Use one-on-ones for growth too. If every one-on-one is a project update, you're adding to the debt every week. Keep a standing item for "one thing I've noticed," good or bad, so feedback becomes a normal part of the week instead of a big scheduled moment.
Say it within a couple of days. Fresh feedback is specific. Feedback that's three months old turns into an argument about who remembers it right. (More on this in Ongoing Feedback and Making Feedback Land.)
Audit every quarter. Go through each person on the team and ask one question: is there anything I'd be uncomfortable seeing in their review that they haven't heard from me yet? If the answer is yes, you found the debt. Pay it that week.
Put coaching on the calendar. If it only happens when there's room, it doesn't happen.
A little maintenance every week costs a lot less than a rewrite later, and with people the rewrite is usually a PIP or a resignation.
Nobody should be surprised in their review. If they are, the debt is mine.