Interview advice: stabilize the business before paying down technical debt

Meng Shao, writing on X on 2026-11-06, advises a tech lead candidate interviewing at a hardware and SaaS company to stabilize the business before fixing technical debt.

The company faces deep technical problems that Shao attributes to debt built up while the business grew unchecked. Shao's suggested sequence is to map the top pain points, stabilize the business, decouple features, normalize protocols, and roll out AI coding to the team over two to three months. The post is one author's advice for a single interview, and it reports no outcomes.