Management Essentials Flashcards
(98 cards)
1
Q
Describe a situation where you anticipated customer needs.
A
Kickstarter - repeated setup process, inability to upgrade and maintain
BigQuery - cost savings, limit, preview
Ss - Caching
2
Q
Walk me through a project you managed? What were the obstacles you faced and how you tackled them?
A
Talk about BigQuery Obstacles - Time constrained. - Needed coordination across all departments and 50+ people. - Holiday season.
- I created a release plan early and shared it with all stakeholders as soon as I started to plan.
- To make it easy for migration, I had to add some extra features.
- I worked with marketing and product to deprioritize tool migration as much as I could. In some places, I agreed to bring those tools back up post-release.
- Due to the holiday season, half of my team was planning a vacation or WFH. I moved our scrum to later in the day and actually used it to my advantage to split the team in a way that we are migrating data 24x7.
3
Q
How do you handle conflicting priorities from another team?
A
eg: Data Infra logging project.
PX tool- did not prioritize.

Being a platfrom team, this is some thing we have to deal with. When such a request comes the first thing that I try to understand is whether the project is aligned with our team goals, audition statement and also if this is some thing high priority for the company.
Next thing would be to compare it with our current priorities and stack rank them. If it’s a higher priority, then talk to the product anthem leads, and figure out how we can slot them in.
4
Q
Describe a situation where you helped the business save money / eliminate wastes.
A
Liveops tool
- Reduced ops team. Reduced engineering work.
BQ Migration
- Redshift was growing 80-90k YoY.
- Stabilized the exponential growth.
- I negotiated with Google for discounted storage pricing.
- Reduced the current cost by 50%.
WD cost reduction project
- Created dashboard with finance and Ds
- Identified areas like datastore reduction
- Contract negotiation
- API benchmarking —> json change
- feature optimization —> atlas api
5
Q
How do you ensure your team is updated with the latest trends?
A
Normally, we buffer enough time for research before a project starts at this time can be used by the engineer to research alternatives work on best practices and get their designs reviewed by their peers.
Another thing that I do with all my teams is to set up a biweekly Engineering sync meetings. This meeting is purely focused on technical learnings and people can share any any sort of technical stuff you’re a starting from from the engineering to research materials or some new language LTS releases.
In addition, I also encourage my engineers to come up with new and innovative solutions to our problems, and encourage them to explore alternatives .
6
Q
How do you onboard an engineer?
A
- I first assign a direct mentor for the engineer.
- I have created an onboarding guide that specifies day by day todo for a mentor and expectations from the new engineer.
- I have also created a codelab with the help of my team that helps them get familiar with our system w/o impacting production.
- I set up 1x1 from their first week to go through expectations and how their career growth should look like over the next 2 quarters.
- After that, I create their career development goals.
7
Q
How did you manage multiple teams?
A
- I had jr managers/leads in different teams. Each team was given OKRs to hit. I would work with the leads to figure out how to achieve those OKRs and present their work plans in quarterly meetings.
- I also started a bi-weekly meeting for the team leads where priorities were discussed and also technical work that can be cross leveraged or mentoring opportunities.
- This way everyone was always in sync with each other and could work together for larger features, firefighting, or releases.
8
Q
How do you make sure everyone in your team is in the loop?
A
Biweekly team meetings.
Team all hands.
Regular one on one with direct and indirect reports.
9
Q
How do you ensure high quality?
A
Set up clear expectations with your team about the quality focus on improving the current system a well maintained system would encourage people to follow quality practices.
Designs and documents are reviewed by the whole team.
People shares best practices and learnings in biweekly engineering meeting.
Make sure people have the bandwidth to focus on quality and not just quantity.
10
Q
How do you handle technical complexity especially if you aren’t a subject expert?
A
- Managers need to be technically competent not experts
- If feasible, review the document and online materials/blogs pre-meeting or discussions.
- As someone who has seen different situations play out, use them as data points and ask deep questions. If engineers have thought about it, they will answer and educate you; else they will know what they are missing (security, reliability, developer efficiency, etc)
Few years back when we were thinking about how to build micro service oriented architecture, we faced a challenge on how do we maintain the infrastructure for all the services?
It feels naive now, but back then we had an experience working with and Infra as code. I I had a staff engineer who proposed the idea of exploring the system.
I assigned him some time to do a POC and share with us his learnings and estimate for the project. I also asked him to build a list of study materials for us.
Once he was done with the POC, I made sure all of us went through the study materials that this engineer provided so we can make an informed decision. Eventually, we light the puzzle, and we had an understanding of how the system works. 
11
Q
Tell a situation where you let the team take credits.
A
ETL V2
- eng all hand.
- blog post.
12
Q
How would you resolve a conflict between your engineers?
A
- Cron job issue biru/sol vs yu
- Lr issue Yu/Steven
- Big quarry time zone issue
13
Q
Describe some critical conversations you had. Why were they hard? How did you tackle it?
A
- Marketing SS - convince them
- Juan. Explain behavioral problems leading to him losing team
- Yu - resolving conflict while making sure I have his back.
- Sol and OOO: denied wfh request Supporting family but maintaining work responsibilities.
- Layoffs
14
Q
Describe a situation where you agreed to do something instead of your opposing belief. Why did you agree?
A
- WD -> Chef engineers move
- LR on JS
15
Q
Describe a situation where your hard work wasn’t paid off.
A
Todea delivering work for Chef but product fails and we went through layoff.
Recruiting international to only laid everyone after a few quarters.
Burn failed
17
Q
How do you track your team’s pulse?
A
- Via 1x1 and team meetings.
- Culture survey for a broader level.
- Sprint retrospectives and team meetings.
- Review cycles
18
Q
Describe a situation where you had conflicts with your peer.
A
- Marketing SS
- WD runes v2 feature
19
Q
How do would you handle a totally demoralized team and bring them back?
A
Acknowledge the current situation.
Focus on the future prospects.
Align peoples goal to the incoming opportunities.
20
Q
How do you usually ensure a project runs on schedule?
A
A work plan on teamweek.
Maintaining the dependency chart actively.
Continuously reprioritizing work each week.
22
Q
Tell me a situation when you made a decision under constraints or w/o enough information? How did it turn out?
A
BQ JOIN issue - minor
LSP for Atlas - sharding v batching (better for conflict resolution or tech discussion)
BQ on demand v flat pricing system.
Outsource war dragons
23
Q
In what ways do you support your team as they work on projects?
A
Depends on direct or indirect management
Project Management - Keep unblocking before people are blocked
Weekly meeting with leads to see what they need help immediately or for the next 2-4 weeks
Review Process - are things working and should we change something
Design Review - I do get involved depending on the severity and technical complexity.
Release planning - As project is heading delivery, directly or indirectly review release proposals and make sure everything is set
24
Q
How do you grow your team?
A
- 1:1 to discuss their interests and continuously checking how they are progressing towards goal
- Quarterly reviewing career matrix; identify focus areas and align with company goals
- Set goals for different timescales
25
Q
What is the most important part of being a manager?
A
- Be excited about working with people: Mentoring them, motivating them; aligning them.
- Great communicator: Need to collaborate; stakeholder management; vertical and lateral management
26
Q
Imagine the design team ran into an issue and wants to run 4 prototypes in parallel. Explain how you would present this to the executives.
A
- I would first gather more data about what the issue is and why they need 4 prototypes to run.
- I will then determine the ROI of this work and cross-check with my manager.
- I would then do the HLD and a rough work plan for them, get it reviewed by my TPM or manager (rough so no need to involve team yet).
- I will then present to the exec the issue, solution, ROI of this, and rough estimate/plan for the work.
- If I need to de-prioritize some other work or request more resources, this is the time to do so.
27
Describe a situation where you managed peers to get things done.
Runes V2
Todea team not doing application work for glamsquad
Marketing superset
28
How do you do portfolio planning?
- Annual planning
- Quarterly identify what needs to be done based on company/team goals
- Prioritize tasks with product fn and eng leads
- Understand the dependencies and ensure those will not be a blocker.
- Finalize the plan by doing some capacity planning and present to the leadership upwards
29
How would you handle fitting in the first 90 days?
- Meet with my manager and understand her expectations.
- I will meet with teammates and start building personal relationships.
- I will try to understand the team dynamics and internal working over the next couple of weeks. Try to understand the team vision if any or the untold one.
- Once I am onboarded and have met with everyone a couple of times, I will do a SWOT analysis with the team.
- After aligning everyone, I will identify low effort, high ROI work I can invest in.
- I will then get it reviewed with my manager and other leads in the team and build the work plans.
- The next couple of months would be me continuing to build up personal relationships and delivering on some of the initiatives I identified.
31
How did you handle the situation when priorities were changed mid-project? What lessons did you learn to avoid them in the future?
Todea chef ended
- Don’t bs but transparent communication to engineers
- Make a plan how quickly we can reach an okay state and stop working on the project
- motivate people with Discussing future opportunities and align engineer’s goals to new roadmap.
Lesson Learned: Always focus on small deliverables. Too big a reveal risks no one ever seeing the project or hard to stop working on it.
33
Describe conflicting priorities you managed with other teams/functions.
- Todea x-team priority
- SS functional asks for features and migration
34
You are about to launch and with 1-2 weeks remaining you realize some component is failing. What do you do and why?
First try to understand the criticality of the system and also the magnitude if it’s a non-blocker, then follow delete release and added two non-bug for future.
If it is it release blocker the next time I’ll do is try to understand how flexible are we with release timeline? Normally release dates are arbitrary, but in some cases it might be more strict. I will then work with our engineering team to understand how much time and effort we need to fix the bug, and if there is a hacky way to make it work in the short term. I also try to understand if we have the proper resource in terms of skills and manpower to fix that in time.
once I have all this information, I will summarize them and share it with the stakeholders make sure everyone is aligned in terms of any release schedule change any extra effort required on our end.
The final step would be to make sure we discuss this during our project, retrospective and learn from our mistakes .
36
What is your management philosophy?
It can be summarized in three categories people first, customer oriented, bias for action.
People first Dash as a manager I put a lot of time and effort to make sure my team is constantly growing.
Customer oriented - this is mostly reflected during prioritization and planning. I always tell my engineers to make a solution for the customer and not to sell our solution to the customer. What does means is if there is a conflict between technical wizardry and customer needs Customer gets the preference, unless it’s compliance or security issue.
Bias for action Dash this is reflected in our decision, making process as a team we follow democratic processes however, sometimes this can lead to decision in ability for every project, we assign a decision maker, who can break this tie. It also allows us to make a decision with uncertainty.
37
Did it ever happen that you wanted to work on some projects but got over prioritized?
Prioritization is a collaborative process and normal to get deprioritized.
- WD automation vs seasons project. User facing features done earlier is better.
- Todea px tool instead of analytics migration: PX tool can unblock the game and get the team off our back to focus on migration.
38
Describe a situation where you got constructive feedback
India office - lead irrespective of seniority
Communication issue - too direct
39
What to do with people that stay at the same level for too long?
Can and Will chart.
- Identify why they are stuck. If it's an sr level and they don't want to grow beyond due to their personal reasons, then accept that it's okay and help them improve their craft at the current level.
- Create a work plan with short to mid-term goals for them to achieve to grow.
- Assign a mentor to them for 1-3 months.
- Evaluate their growth and decide if they have the ability to improve in the current job or not.
40
Describe a situation where you convinced someone that your choice was better than theirs. How did it turn out?
Kickstarter aka platform team for common systems.
Convincing DI brain trust that focusing on infra stability was long term play.
- The brain trust wanted more product improvements like AB test analysis or helping marketing. I proposed that we focus 1 quarter fully on infra stability.
- I presented with them the number of engineering resources we are wasting fighting fires per month and the amount of time wasted by people using those tools.
- With those data, I was able to convince them the need for improving our system and they even agreed to spend more time building out test system for our engineering.
- 4-5 months total, our system uptime was stabilized to be 99.9%+ consistently. We freed up our engineering resources significantly. We had a test environment on IAC that we were using to build features fast. And the next 6 months we delivered data migration, new product line for R&D, helped data science and marketing with several projects.. huge improvement in productivity.
41
Describe a time when you found it difficult to focus and stay productive due to uncontrollable external factors.
The week after I came to know that we are doing a layoff was quite hard. This is the first time in companies history, and in my life I was supposed to help plan the layoff list.
Honestly, I’d love to say that I did some thing and magically. I solved the problem, but that was not the case.
I was lucky to have a sympathetic wife. I just listened to my blabbering. Eventually, I calmed down when I realized it wasn’t anyone’s fault. No one could have seen it coming. Hindsight bias is pretty powerful. However, I realized everyone was doing what they thought was best at that particular time.
42
Describe when you realized you can't deliver on time.
Todea - Chat
Assigned 2 engineers - 1 left; adjusted staffing based on prioritization but still was impacted.
Notified client teams and negotiated down certain features.
Temple Raid Event
- I got the product spec and created the work plan and timeline.
- Towards the latter half of the project, during playtest, designers kept making significant changes to the gameplay.
- As I kept constantly prioritizing, I started realizing we won't be able to deliver everything if we kept getting so much extra work.
- I then set up a meeting with some stakeholders and products to help prioritize. Turns out the designer wasn't at all comfortable with these changes.
- I then deprioritized another project which wasn't part of team OKR and moved those engineers to the new project. I got the designer to agree to do an extensive playtest and lock their feedback for this version within the next 3 days.
- I worked with the QA manager to get extra resources and let the customer support know of the new changes.
Moving forward, I started the system to do a paper playtest before the product sends such iteration heavy features our way.
44
How do you deal with conflicts?
- Identify the cause of conflicts by meeting the individuals separately.
- Work out by proposing my solution.
- Chenyu v DI pull request. Weixiao v Jianchu.
45
How do you motivate people?
1. People are motivated when they feel that work is aligned to their personal goal.
2. Career management People are motivated when they have clear set of expectations and goals
3. Culture - feels respected, trusted and involved
I don’t bullshit people; have transparent two-way communication.
Focus on career management continuously identify an airline individuals career goals with the company and team goals
46
Tell me a situation where you failed? What did you learn from it?
- SS marketing - stakeholder left
- SMRhistory to BQ
- feedback issue Samantha?
47
How do you prevent employee burnout?
- Work is balanced in the team.
- Make sure your team has a strong work-life balance and not always on crunch time.
- Make sure that everyone knows their goals and expectations.
- Make sure that people feel passionate about the work they are doing and are improving. Give them the opportunity to flex their creative muscles.
- Recognize if someone is feeling burned out and have meetings with them to dig deeper and see how I can help.
Adin and burnouts. It can happen not only due to work or workplace but due to external factors. Recognize it and help them.
48
Describe a situation where you solved a complex thing simply.
- Atlas API cpu and b/w cost: Split API based on usage and separate rate limit.
- Data Infra ff bot
- BQ cost issue + slicing and dicing requirements by implementing a caching db.
- Kickstarter: separate server maintenance.
Gifting Tool
- Due to manual param errors, the product and PX team were always asking the engineer to create new stand-alone MapReduce jobs to fix some items or game state.
- I quickly created a gifting tool that will enable someone to reward users based on conditions specified.
- I was then able to convince PX to use this tool to give compensation to the player instead of asking engineers to write a map-reduce job. This saved 30+ eng hours per week and reduced stress across the team.
- This tool also gained traction by PX and marketing to do campaigns to the player like "women's day", "red week" etc.
Metabranch
- Engineers were breaking each other.
- QA was testing several branches and lots of context switching.
- I proposed a tool for continuous deployment. Engineers were adding their feature branch to the configuration. The tool then polls those branches for changes and deploy to multiple staging servers with a different configuration that we will use in production.
- The tool would immediately notify engineers if their commit broke tests or failed to merge so they have to resolve it asap.
- QA was able to test the whole version and less context switching. Engineers were aware of conflicting changes during the development cycle.
BQ $ valuation per query to teach SQL quality.
49
Let's talk about your management philosophy. Why are they important to you?
Vision
Culture
Growth
50
What's your management style?
Visionary Dash and make sure that my team understands the goal of the project and the big picture.
Democratic – decision making I try to follow process to be clear I don’t legal with democratic process and there is always someone who is responsible for making that decision awards decision trap,
Coaching in phase I tend to think of my work like a soccer coach being on the sideline I do have picture and I try to unblock people and sometimes review the progress that they documentations and see how they need my help to succeed.
51
Describe three key things that you believe are essential to being a good manager.
Great coach and avoid micromanagement.
Great communicator and inclusive.
Result oriented and has a strong vision.
52
How did you manage a project that needs cross-functional/teamwork?
- I meet with relevant teams and function on a quarterly and bi-weekly basis to discuss priorities and resource requirements.
- After I get the project plan approved, I create a work plan in a teamweek and a dependency graph.
- I then reach out to the functions/team with the work we need doing, the metrics we are trying to improve, and the deadline. I tend to keep sufficient buffers in between.
- If a task can't be delivered, I try to adjust my work plan to make sure the team continues to work with minimal disruptions.
CTF
- Client, UI x-team
- QA, PX self team.
53
Tell about a complex technical problem/system you dealt with. What did you do? How did you decide to do that? What were the results and any iteration needed? What would you do differently knowing what you know now?
LSP
| ETLV2.0
54
Describe a tough situation you handled. Why was it hard? What would you do differently?
What dragons outsourcing
Layoff planning
Conflict between Higuaín and Steven.
57
Describe how you would approach a project with just a high level, vague requirement.
- Gather requirements on what is actually needed.
- Talk to the DRI to identify metrics they trying to achieve.
- Do technology benchmarking or product prototype based on the situation.
- Create an HLD, get it reviewed, approved by the team, and create the work plan for it.
58
What risks do you take during the project management? How do you mitigate risks?
- The risks during product planning include assumptions and predictions you make.
- I mitigate the risk by first getting my work reviewed by others.
- If the project is complicated, I would start with a prototype or MVP and gauge success.
- In terms of timeline risks, I mitigate it by constantly re-prioritizing and adjusting the timeline to fit into the constraints.
59
Describe a situation where you helped someone get promoted when stuck. What would you do differently?
- Identified areas of strength and development.
- Create smart short to mid-term goals.
- Delegated work accordingly to help grow.
Juan
Good skills but no x team impact
Found initiative and also expanded sfos tool support
Chenyu
- - Had strong knowledge of AWS and codebase.
- - Weak on GCP and not comfortable in learning by exploring.
- - Assigned mentor to her to grow on GCP.
- - Gave her related projects and created goals.
- - Got promoted to E3 the following year.
-- Nothing I would do differently. Maybe I would emphasize her inability to focus on self-development more.
60
What do you mean by result driven and ROI focused?
ROI focused means that I evaluate work based on their impact and reprioritize things heavily.
Result-driven means I make sure that things are done and everyone is accountable for their actions.
61
State your top 3 strengths.
Strong vision & strategy
Career Management
Analyzing the root cause, and finding a solution
Strong communication, Dash transparent, and two way communication 
62
Describe how you do project planning. How do you ensure you are correct?
- Step 1 I create the proposal with assumptions, estimates. I then get it reviewed by my peers, DRI, and team.
- Step 2, I then create the HLD. I will get engineers for this as needed. Then get it reviewed by the team and anyone else who has context on the system.
- Step 3, I make a rough estimate and lay down the work plan in teamweek. I create all the dependencies and start getting in touch with those teams/functions about the priorities.
- Step 4, the teams are created and final design documentation is done by the lead eng and Jira estimates are created by the team overall.
- Step 5, I keep adjusting the timeline and actively re-prioritizing work every week to keep us on track. I also ensure all dependencies are done before time.
63
How do you handle difficult team members? Did you ever let such an employee go? How did you handle it?
- Give them strong feedback during your 1x1 and mention this is unacceptable.
- If it continues, escalate to HR and take action.
Edward
- Hated design review and had a very hard time getting it approved so started lobbying against it.
- I tried explaining several times over multiple weeks. He would listen and agree but then later would be visibly upset and influence others.
- I realized it's not working when couple of his friends complained to me that it was tiring to hear his comments always.
- I put him on a PIP to improve his behavior and design skills. I took feedback from his team towards the end of PIP and realized it's not working. I let him go.
63
Describe a situation where you disagreed and worked. How did it turn out?
LR
WD engineer transition
64
What book or literature has had the biggest impact on your professional existence? Why?
- The effective engineer by Edmond Lau (ROI concept).
- Critical Conversation by Kerry Peterson (it helped me how to approach complicated situation)
- The Alliance by Reid Hoffman (how to help engineers grow and retain).
64
How do you make sure your team in unblocked? What strategy do you implement to get them moving w/o obstruction?
- Sprint: scrum, retrospective
- Lead meetings
- 1:1 checkin
Foresee problem
See current issue
Fix problem that already happened
67
Your project is running behind. How would you communicate this to other teams? How would you communicate this to the executive team?
- I am assuming I already ran out of options from internal prioritization and is out of resource as well to end up in this stage.
- I would do a quick post mortem to understand why we ended up here. I would then do a re-estimation of the remaining work left. Finally, I would draw out a prioritized list of work.
- I would then reach out to other teams and exec to let them know why we failed and what options we have along with how we intend to prevent such mishaps in the future.
Kingdom war:
- Lots of requests from the game designers.
- I needed all work to be done so deprioritized other projects and transferred resources.
67
State your top 3 weaknesses.
- Sometimes I come off as too direct while providing feedback. I have improved over the last year but I am still working on this with the help of active feedback from my engineers and peers.
- Public presentation. I haven't had too many opportunities for this. I do some presentations during our eng all hands but it's too infrequent.
- I think I can improve more on UI/UX. Right now I am not too good at it. I am lucky to have hired a TPM with good UI skills.
68
Finish the interview
Thanks for your time. I really appreciate you taking the time and giving me an opportunity to express myself.
I would like to end by saying that I believe in getting things done and heavily prioritizing based on impact. I love managing as a coach and leading the team by vision.
Based on the job description, the team is looking for someone with cross-team and functional expertise.
69
Describe a situation where you had to tackle unforeseen issues
- SS merge issue
- WD handoff - tech stack alignment
- todea chef shut down
69
Tell me a situation where you took the blame for your team's failure.
Superset launch - few weeks after the launch, the system started performing poorly. The team tried to make improvements, but nothing was working. Once I realized that the complaints are increasing I got involved. This point I did two things. I started working with engineers to brainstorm the causes and potential solutions. On the other hand I drafted shot postmortem explaining the cause of failures and taking the blame for not identifying it sooner. I also took the blame for delaying the escalation of the issue as I should have noticed the impact.
Todea - there was a lot of project management issues with the game team. The main reason was because it was across team work. There was no clear owner after I realized the challenges I started working on the solution, but at the same time acknowledge to the leader, ship that this is some thing I should have noticed earlier instead of relying on the tech leads to solve such a complicated personal issue personnel issue.
70
Describe a situation where you had to iterate or course correct.
- LSP V1 to V2 (Technical)
War Dragons outsourcing process iterations. 
Altlas api changes
72
Give an example of a mistake that you made.
- SS marketing issue
- Samantha and not emphasizing critical feedback.
- SMRHistory tech decision
- Prioritization issue for bq data loss
73
When working with product or project managers, have you disagreed with task prioritization? How did you resolve this?
- Runes V2
- Deprioritized px tool for DI migration
74
Tell me a situation when you had to change something in your team based on feedback.
- DI slack bot
- WD transition: timezone issue - morning instead of night; back to back meetings etc
- WD ff - both teams started on call
- Todea collaboration issues
75
Describe a situation where you anticipated technical flaws.
- LSP batching vs sharding
- SS slicing dicing and need for cache layer
- Cron job and long running tasks
76
How do you manage your low performer?
- Identify low performers.
- Give strong feedback.
- Assign a mentor if needed.
- Create short term goals for them to achieve and progress.
- Periodic check-up and Pass or Fail decisions. (Sam / Nate [fail])
77
Tell me a system that you designed? How did you know your design was right? Did you need iteration?
LSP
- I did a historical analysis to determine the throughput we needed (~30 per sec).
- I created an HLD. There were constraints that processing need to happen in App Engine only.
- I worked with one of my sr engineers to prototype this design and load test it.
- Iteration: During the initial design, I was using app engine threads but GIL was causing the issue so I redid the design to use Kubernetes and build API on the app engine to do the actual processing.
78
Tell me about yourself
I am highly result oriented and ROI focused. I believe in managing as a coach and leading the team with a strong vision.
Over my tenure at Pocket Gems, I have hired and trained 15+ engineers, some to be tech leads and managers.
I have worn several hats starting from a mobile engineer to backend infra to managing teams in a game studio and dev ops system.
Currently, I am building up the platform infra org for the company to improve data-driven decisions and help R&D teams to quickly iterate. I am also helping to develop the company brand by initiating and leading the initiative for our company blog.
79
How did you transition into EM from IC?
- I was initially assigned 2 engineers to manage. I started meeting with them on a weekly basis and created their career development document based on their goals.
- I started going into product and planning meetings.
- I then started to work with my PM to formulate the next quarter plan and started managing the ongoing projects.
- I was still actively leading and reviewing projects. Over the next couple of quarters, I slowed down on my hands-on coding, focused more on reviews, project planning.
79
Describe a situation where you started working on something and realized better alternatives.
Atlas API caching - blind caching strategy was problematic
Redshift Bandaid => BQ
- I was working on projects to improve the redshift performance. I soon realized that no matter what I was trying the improvements were small and short-lived.
- I then started exploring alternatives and researching various benchmarking documents.
- Then I got a small 2 person team to benchmark several systems available in the market to identify if we can move out of redshift completely.
Cron job using Tasking queue
80
Describe a situation where you had to manage up for getting something done.
DI layoff
Apac hiring
DI migration
Kickstarter -> platform team
WD eng initiative (automation and cost savings) -> reduced staffing and make it profitable.
81
What is your project management style? How would you protect the engineering group?
- ROI focused.
- Constant in sync with x-function/team to resolve dependencies.
- Reprioritize work.
82
How did you handle cross-team work in dragons?
- I started bi-weekly and quarterly planning meetings with the other team leads where we would go over items that needed cross-team prioritization.
- Also on a weekly basis, I would make sure all the dependencies are being handled and get updates from the DRIs to make sure we are still on track.
- I would actively reprioritize all the ongoing work to ensure we are hitting our time.
83
Tell me a situation when you had to provide strong feedback. How did it go? What made it hard? What would you do differently?
Juan - Communication
Yu Guan - LR
83
Describe the process of deciding when to escalate an issue.
- Internal prioritization isn't working.
- You are out of resources to get things done.
- Do a post mortem with the team on why we reached this situation and how to prevent this in the future.
- Get a re-estimate done and present all these findings to the executive or upper level.
83
Describe a situation where you learned quickly.
- SMR & GCP.
| - IAC (Adin walk me through)
84
Describe when you had to work with a tight deadline.
BQ
4 months left due to legal complications.
Crated work plan and shared across the company. I made sure everyone was constantly aware of our progress.
Did phased launch by rolling out features at the relevant time.
I also negotiated 2 extra weeks from finance.
I worked with the game team leads and marketing to aggressively deprioritize tools that aren't relevant. In some cases, we agreed on temporarily disabling the tool.
85
Tell me a situation recently where you dealt with high priority fire. How you tackled it and what you learned from it?
- BQ data deletion by Soul: Treat production migration/staging with equal auth process as production
- Logging data missing: If project was paused, resume full testing
85
Tell me how you trained your eng lead & manager. What would you do differently?
For engineering leadership training, I do tandem coaching.
- I started with them leading small project(s). I would review their design and documents before passing it to the team and others for review.
- Once they started getting the hang of it, I started assigning them more complicated tasks for them to work solo and get buy-ins from the team.
- I then would create specific goals for them and give increasing responsibilities.
Weixiao
- I gave him an intern to mentor. After he mentored 2 successfully, I gave him 2 jr engineers to manage.
- I would then constantly give him feedback and guide him on how to do 1x1, project planning, and working with PM on prioritization.
- After he shadowed a couple projects with me, I assigned some projects for him to lead fully.
- Once he delivered them, I gave him more projects and the team to lead.
85
Describe a situation where you identified gaps and improved processes.
- DI slack bot
- Todea x-team pod
- WD unit testing lambda
- Building IAC (todea?)
- Dockerized system in WD
- DI prioritization
85
How do you approach a design given to you?
- Understand the requirements thoroughly.
- Determine the scale we are talking about.
- Figure out the data models, retention, and backup.
- Build the HLD aka component-level diagram.
- Explore scalability, reliability, and latency of the system. Are there any single points of failure or not.
- Design the API needed.
- Share the design with the team/ DRI to get approved.
- Build a prototype or do load testing as required.
88
How do you deal with ambiguous situations?
-understand the problem; find objective and subjective data points.
- identify how to tackle them; take feedback if you can.
- iterate as you learn more.
- WD automation to reduce staffing
- BQ on demand pricing
88
Describe a situation where you refused to compromise quality.
Liveops Immediate priority works
- PM was asking work always with immediate priority.
- Eng and QA were scrambling to get things done and had no review process. The test was barely able to keep up as well.
- I started pushing back. It was hard since PM felt I was blocking resources for him. I pulled out data for fires caused due to lack of review and testing and after several meetings, I was able to convince him to follow sprint method and implement strict code review and QA process in the team.
- I was able to reduce fires significantly and improve the morale of the team. This along with several other things around that time helped me get the team from 3-4 fires per week to 1-2 per quarter.
Liveops Unit Test
- The events code had no tests. This was hacked up by a single engineer previously.
- Adding UT would mean slower delivery.
- I used the data of how many fires we had and how worried we generally are trying to touch systems. I wanted to scale the team as well so I insisted strongly on writing tests for all code moving forward.
- I convinced the engineer that I am focused not only on their work throughput but quality as well.
DI CR process
- Same as Liveops.
88
How do you do a risk assessment for your project? How do you make sure you are right most of the time?
I do historical analysis to understand the performance of the existing system and determine the scale we need to support.
After that, if needed, I will do some benchmarking or technical analysis either myself or with the help of an engineer.
After that, I will create the project proposal, put down the ROI metrics I am trying to impact, and get it reviewed by my TPM and my team. Sometimes my manager if needed.
Multiple reviews, data crunching, and technical analysis help me make sure I am able to deliver a quality product with a high result.
88
How would you manage cross-team priorities?
DI Braintrust
- I started the monthly DI brain trust soon after I joined the team.
- I would present to the group our team's internal priorities and how we reached those prioritizations.
- This meeting helped me make sure our priorities are aligned with other teams since we supported the whole company.
- For smaller requests, I made a template that everyone has to provide the ROI and deadline for their request, and based on that I will prioritize. If it needs to replace an existing priority, I try to find if other projects can potentially be de-prioritized. If yes, then I reach out to that team letting them know of the change and why.
If I am not able to resolve it, I would get buy-ins from my manager and move forward with that priority.
89
How do you manage your high performer?
- Provide feedback and make sure they realize you appreciate them. Open feedback or closed feedback depending on the person.
- Work with them to identify their career aspirations and put them in high impact and complex projects.
- Increase their responsibility and help them get promoted.
- Adin / Chenyu
91
How do you handle cross-functional work?
- I have a bi-weekly and quarterly planning meeting with relevant teams to make sure everyone is aware of other priorities and I am able to get the required resources.
- After I have my project proposal ready, I create a dependency chart for the project and get the necessary buy-ins from other teams.
- Then it's all about frequent follow-ups with them to ensure they are on track. I tend to keep enough buffer to make sure in case of an emergency we can come up with alternates.
91
What would you do if your coworker announced two days before launch that they were not going to deliver and in fact had not been working on their deliverables as previously stated in prior meetings?
- Try to see if we can continue work w/o it.
- I will check if I can shuffle my work and continue uninterrupted.
- I will check if I can continue working with a minimal deliverable from them.
- If nothing works, I will ask them to provide a fresh estimate and redo my project plan with that. I will also try to find out why this happened in the first place to avoid in the future.
- After gathering all data, I will present it to my release team or exec team with a new release plan, why we have to redo it, and how I plan to avoid such issues in the future.
- If it's a pattern, escalate it to their manager.
Pick any event.
- UI miss providing assets due to higher priorities and wrong estimates.
- Get black box and work on it. Wait for UI in the meantime.
- Learned lessons to add more buffer for teams that tend to miss estimates too often.
92
How do you influence stakeholders?
- Identify stakeholders
- Understand where they are coming from; listen to everyone and see what you can do to help them
SS - single source of BI
WD - Outsourcing
94
What is your strategy in interviewing so you hire the right people?
- I work with the recruiter to create an accurate job description for the role.
- I then train the recruiter on the team's responsibility, culture, and prospect so they can source and screen better.
- I then create the panel as per the role. We have some boilerplate interviews to use and I generally add a job-specific interview there (like infra design for the current team).
- I then meet with the panel pre-onsite and post-onsite to gather feedback and come to an agreement on the candidate's skill, experience, and culture fit for the team.
94
How did you handle when a project you worked on got deprioritized or shut down? What would you do to avoid this in the future?
RTB
- I was asked by the executive team to help build a next-gen marketing system with RTB.
- The request was very high. I got in touch with the team and was able to adjust the ROI and agreed on much smaller scale work.
- I assigned one engineer to that project (compared to estimated 3-4 previously). Two months down the line the project got deprioritized due to lack of +ve impact.
- Even though I lost 1 engineer for a couple of months, I think I actively determining the ROI helped reduce the risk significantly.
- After the project was shut down, I asked for a post mortem from the project lead and realized the team couldn't hire director to lead the vision.
Lesson learned: Along with the ROI also assess the succesability of the work.
95
Describe a situation where you planned futuristically.
WD op cost
SS cache
BQ cost
Kickstarter
96
How do you help your engineers grow?
- Create SMART goals and evaluate progress monthly.
- Constant feedback and unblocking them from worrying about external hassles.
- Provide mentorship or assign a mentor.
- Properly delegating tasks.
- Giving space for them to explore, innovate, and learn.
97
What kind of culture do you want to build in your team?
I want to build a team where everyone can speak up and argue on what they feel is the right way to do something. And make sure that everyone is accountable for their actions. I also encourage being proactive a lot.
98
How do you tradeoff? Give an example
How
- Analyze all options
- Communicate to stakeholders
- Review & monitor
- Learn
Example
- SS open source breaking issues
- LR v ELR
