If you're team is 500 strong you definitely should be at a point where you can do things right. If not, the 'debt' is not mainly technical, it's clusterfuck of bad decision making.
Yea sure some people in the sea of 500 will be doing elegant clean things, working in the core part of the business ( usually at or near the cash register program ) but if you have reason to have 500 developers you don't simply get the luxury of having every project be written perfectly.
Landing somewhere in-between by getting things done not perfect but shippable, and doing it fast as possible is par for the course ime. The best code is always written the 2nd or 3rd time, never the first.
Especially on the case of hyper growth worrying your competitors like lyft or postmates or amazon might get something pivotal out first.
People have to learn somewhere, usually things like this they learn at scale, on the job.
