Kitchen staff use a kitchen and surface clean the kitchen, but rarely are responsible for building the kitchen, performing real maintenance on the equipment in the kitchen, or the periodic deep cleaning of the equipment. If a piece of equipment is on the fritz, they cope with it as best they can; if it slows down how quickly they can get an order out, or it results in a lot of wasted product, or it forces items to be taken off the menu, then so be it. Sure, the kitchen staff may be frustrated with how crappy their kitchen is, but they've still got to get orders out and make the best of it that they can.

Customers don't see that, they only see the plated dish. The manager in charge of the front of house knows nothing at all about kitchens, but knows they're pushing out the orders coming in and not getting any complaints from customers. So from his perspective, whatever the state of the kitchen is acceptable.

The back of house manager (or head Chef) is responsible for that. If business has outgrown the original kitchen's capacity, he needs to make sure the head boss understands the need for investing in new equipment or remodeling, and the risk of not being able to keep up with orders if that doesn't happen. If equipment is fritzy, he needs to make sure the head boss is aware of the potential consequences of using it in it's fritzy state, as well as the risk involved if that equipment completely goes out.

But even if that occurs and the risks are successfully conveyed, the head boss may decide to leave things as-is. If the kitchen is currently keeping up with demand with things as-is but the waiters aren't, the "emergency of the day" for him is hiring more waiters. If the business doesn't have the capital to do both at once, he'll spend the money on more waiters first and punt the kitchen's needs. Or if the equipment only impacts a few low volume items, he may decide the risk of it going out is acceptable vs. the cost to address the issue. Or if the whole kitchen needs renovated to ensure it's robust enough to keep up with the growing demand, but the kitchen is already operating at capacity, there's just no good time to renovate it. You'll either be operating at reduced capacity while it's happening, or completely shutting down for a remodel. Both of which carry all kinds of risks - the business could lose market momentum, order quality could go down while the kitchen staff break in the new equipment. If the kitchen staff is already stretched to capacity, disrupting the kitchen is likely to cause customer-facing issues. So even if it means the kitchen staff will be dealing with a constant stream of "emergencies of the day", as the costs/impact of addressing the kitchen's issues may genuinely be outweighed by the risks of not doing so. At least in the short term.

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Sometimes a company can end up in the situation you described because of incompetence or biases in upper management. But other times it can be competent and unbiased management fully comprehending the situation and deliberately deciding what to prioritize. It's also not limited to tech - every functional area of a company has to deal with their own equivalent of "technical debt", and are subject to having their needs prioritized or marginalized based on what upper management deems the most critical. As an employee in a situation where your team's needs are being marginalized, the best you can do is determine how transient or permanent the marginalization is, and whether what you find out is acceptable for your situation or if it's time to look elsewhere.

Similar with middle management - the best you can do is ensure you successfully articulate to upper management the current state of what's under your purview, the potential risks that exist for not investing more in what's under your purview, and the potential benefits that exist from doing so. Based on the results you get from doing that, you can get a read on how permanent or transient your situation is, and what the likely long term aspects are for what you're in charge with, and decide what to do from there.