https://technicalaccounting.net Long-form essays on technical accounting — the practice of measuring resourcing, maintenance, and architecture in software engineering. en-us Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/junior-developers-in-the-age-of-ai Companies are ditching junior engineers en masse. They’ll tell you it’s because AI writes better code. They’re right…but also missing the point. Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/junior-developers-in-the-age-of-ai Christine Miao hiring ai engineering-culture https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/explain-the-business-impact-and-other-cliches Ask any engineer and they'll tell you The Thing that's slowing them down. The Thing doesn't get done because engineering's work is invisible — you can’t see what's bleeding. Technical accounting maps resourcing, architecture, and maintenance so everyone can see The Thing too. Mon, 23 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/explain-the-business-impact-and-other-cliches Christine Miao technical-accounting engineering-leadership communication https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/developers-stop-job-hunting-like-its-2015 The tech job market isn't shrinking — the hiring process is. AI bots have made the spray-and-pray application path useless. The new playbook is taste, intention, and trust: meaningful coffee chats over hundreds of cold applications. Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/developers-stop-job-hunting-like-its-2015 Christine Miao hiring ai careers https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/not-using-ai-youre-not-the-problem AI companies are leaving product management to their users. The mobile era was a buzzy party where hosts cared about the guest experience; the AI era is an awkward room where consumers sit in separate corners while hosts loudly proclaim how great everything is over the PA. Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/not-using-ai-youre-not-the-problem Christine Miao ai product culture https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/how-not-to-learn-ai A story about two ways of learning a paradigm-shifting technology: Mom in a dark room with a homework assignment, and a nine-year-old too busy playing Neopets to know it was a new thing. The AI hype machine has us all in the dark room. Mon, 17 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/how-not-to-learn-ai Christine Miao ai learning culture https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/how-good-engineers-become-bad-leaders In most fields, you get promoted by selling a vision, delivering it, and getting credit. Engineers get promoted because they had a Very Good Answer. That asymmetry quietly compounds until the first time a CTO has to sell their work to non-technical peers — and it goes badly. Mon, 17 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/how-good-engineers-become-bad-leaders Christine Miao engineering-leadership cto communication https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/ai-is-going-to-hack-jira AI code gen absolutely excels at producing byproducts. In Big Agile, engineering = new features = byproducts. Combine the two and you get a CEO who fires their competent engineering team, watches EBITDA jump, and never sees the foundation cracking underneath. Mon, 20 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/ai-is-going-to-hack-jira Christine Miao ai agile engineering-leadership https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/the-magical-thinking-of-busy-ctos When an overwhelmed CTO promotes a strong IC into management to lighten the load, three outcomes are possible — and all of them are bad. Why "leadership" is a separate job that must be taught, not anointed. Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/the-magical-thinking-of-busy-ctos Christine Miao engineering-leadership management mentorship https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/ai-a-vibe-check AI will reliably get you ~75% of the way to a job well done. Extraordinary — but the output is still intern work. Why naive AI usage breaks teams without the taste and discernment to spot half-baked output. Mon, 18 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/ai-a-vibe-check Christine Miao ai engineering-leadership productivity https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/for-ctos-politics-is-the-job Most engineering leaders don't realize that making perception match reality is their job. A practical, side-by-side comparison of how a CMO and a CTO would lead the same major initiative — and why the difference is more dangerous than ever. Mon, 21 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/for-ctos-politics-is-the-job Christine Miao engineering-leadership cto communication https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/dear-cto-its-not-2015-anymore An entire generation of engineering leaders has never had to justify the existence of their orgs. The post-2023 reckoning means it's no longer enough to optimize for retention — CTOs need to own their narratives or someone else will write them. Mon, 23 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/dear-cto-its-not-2015-anymore Christine Miao engineering-leadership cto org-design https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/productive-teams-dont-measure-productivity We spend $200B+ a year trying to quantify engineering productivity. None of it works — and the effort itself is the antithesis of productivity. A look at how the Agile Industrial Complex took us this far off course. Mon, 19 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/productive-teams-dont-measure-productivity Christine Miao engineering-leadership agile productivity https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/theres-no-such-thing-as-developer-productivity Engineering isn't a cost center. You can't quantify ROI in dollar values. Why traditional productivity metrics don't apply to engineering — and what to measure instead. Mon, 15 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT https://technicalaccounting.net/resources/theres-no-such-thing-as-developer-productivity Christine Miao engineering-leadership productivity agile