Engineering Manager's Questions

Technical Questions

1. How do you approach technical debt in your team's codebase?

Great Response: "I view technical debt as a strategic consideration rather than just a problem. First, I help the team identify and categorize tech debt through regular code reviews and architecture discussions. We maintain a living document of technical debt items, prioritizing them based on their impact on development velocity, reliability, and security. Some tech debt is acceptable in the short term, so we schedule dedicated time each sprint to address high-priority items while balancing feature development. For significant refactoring, we create a business case showing how addressing this debt will improve velocity or reduce risks. I've found that incorporating tech debt maintenance into the normal workflow, rather than treating it as a separate project, leads to more sustainable improvements."

Mediocre Response: "I allocate time in our sprints for addressing technical debt. Usually, we identify issues during sprint retrospectives and add them to our backlog. When developers have downtime or between major features, they pick up tech debt items. We try to follow the boy scout rule – leave the code better than you found it. I try to advocate for tech debt fixes with product management when they're important."

Poor Response: "We handle technical debt when it becomes a blocker. I ask developers to maintain a list of issues, and when we start seeing too many bugs or slowed delivery, we'll take a sprint to clean things up. The business doesn't usually care about tech debt unless it affects features, so I typically prioritize delivering new functionality and handle tech debt reactively when needed."

2. How do you ensure code quality across your engineering team?

Great Response: "I believe code quality requires a multi-faceted approach. We've established clear, team-defined coding standards documented in our wiki, with examples of what good looks like. We use automated tools appropriate for our stack—static analyzers, linters, and test coverage metrics—integrated into our CI/CD pipeline. But tools are only part of the solution. We practice regular peer code reviews with a focus on learning rather than gatekeeping. I conduct periodic architecture reviews where we look at system-wide patterns. For improvement, we do targeted lunch-and-learns or workshops on specific quality topics. Most importantly, I make quality a shared value by recognizing quality contributions equally with feature delivery, measuring the team on quality metrics like defect rates, and being willing to adjust timelines when necessary to maintain quality standards."

Mediocre Response: "We have a code review process where at least one other developer needs to approve changes before merging. We use static analysis tools and require unit tests for new code. Our CI pipeline runs these checks automatically. I encourage developers to speak up when they see quality issues and occasionally do code quality audits myself to identify recurring problems."

Poor Response: "We rely on our QA team to catch issues, and they've been pretty good at finding bugs before release. Developers are expected to write clean code and follow our style guide. When we find recurring problems, I'll talk to the specific developers involved. We try to keep our test coverage above 50%, but with tight deadlines, we sometimes have to compromise on testing to meet our release dates."

3. How do you balance the need for technical innovation with project stability?

Great Response: "I approach this balance as a portfolio management exercise. Innovation carries both opportunity and risk, so I create clearly defined spaces for each. For core production systems, we follow stricter change control and testing protocols, focusing on incremental improvements. For innovation, we allocate 10-20% of team capacity to explore new technologies or approaches through time-boxed proof of concepts and spikes. Any innovation with potential for production use undergoes a graduated introduction process: first as an isolated non-critical feature, then expanding its use as it proves stable. We also maintain an architecture decision record documenting why and how we adopt new technologies, which helps maintain context as the team evolves. This approach has allowed us to modernize our stack without disrupting service quality."

Mediocre Response: "I try to strike a balance by encouraging innovation in controlled ways. We might dedicate one sprint per quarter to exploring new technologies, or allow team members to use newer approaches in less critical parts of the application. We make sure innovations are well-tested before integrating them into core functionality. I also try to gather feedback from more experienced team members before adopting anything too cutting-edge."

Poor Response: "We focus mainly on project stability and meeting our commitments to stakeholders. Innovation happens mostly when we start new projects and can choose new technologies. During ongoing development, we stick with proven technologies and approaches unless there's a compelling business reason to change. I find this keeps projects predictable and reduces risks of delays that often come with adopting new technologies."

4. How do you approach estimating development work for your team?

Great Response: "I've found that estimation is most effective when it combines bottom-up input with historical data and acknowledges uncertainty. My approach starts with breaking down work into smaller components that developers can more accurately assess. We use planning poker or similar consensus techniques to surface different perspectives and assumptions. For similar work, we reference our historical velocity data to validate estimates. I emphasize relative sizing (story points or t-shirt sizes) over absolute hours, as it better accounts for complexity and uncertainty. We track estimation accuracy over time to improve our process, reviewing where we were significantly off and why. With stakeholders, I communicate estimates as ranges with confidence levels rather than fixed dates, especially for novel work. Importantly, I protect the team from pressure to artificially reduce estimates to meet desired timelines."

Mediocre Response: "Our team uses story points and planning poker for estimation. Developers discuss each requirement and vote on complexity. We track our velocity sprint over sprint so we know roughly how many points we can complete, which helps with sprint planning. For larger projects, we do a rough estimate upfront and refine it as we break down the work. If estimates seem too high, we look for ways to reduce scope."

Poor Response: "We typically have the most knowledgeable developer for a particular area give a time estimate for each task. I add a buffer of about 20% for unexpected issues. For large projects, we break down the major components and sum up the estimates. If the timeline doesn't work for product management, we negotiate on what features can be simplified or moved to a later release. We adjust our approach as we go based on how actual development time compares to our estimates."

5. How do you approach system architecture decisions within your team?

Great Response: "I approach architecture decisions as collaborative exercises with clear ownership. When facing significant architectural choices, I first ensure we have well-defined requirements and constraints, including non-functional requirements like performance, scalability, and security needs. I bring together senior engineers to explore multiple approaches, documenting trade-offs of each. We use techniques like ADRs (Architecture Decision Records) to capture not just what we decided but why, which preserves context for future team members. For complex decisions, we might create prototypes to validate assumptions before full commitment. While I ensure decisions align with company-wide technical strategy and foster consensus, I also make sure decisions don't stall in endless debate – someone (usually the tech lead or myself) must own the final call. After implementation, we schedule reviews to assess if the architecture is meeting its intended goals and adjust if needed."

Mediocre Response: "I gather input from senior team members and discuss options in architecture meetings. We consider the immediate requirements as well as some potential future needs. Once we agree on an approach, we document the high-level design and share it with the team. For significant changes, we might hold a design review with architects from other teams. We try to follow company standards and best practices while addressing our specific needs."

Poor Response: "Architecture decisions are typically made by our most experienced developers who understand the system best. I trust their expertise and help communicate these decisions to the rest of the team. We focus on meeting the current requirements efficiently rather than over-engineering for hypothetical future needs. If we run into limitations, we can always refactor later. The priority is delivering working software that meets business needs."

6. How do you ensure your team's code is secure and follows best practices for security?

Great Response: "Security needs to be woven throughout the development lifecycle rather than tacked on at the end. We start with regular security training for all engineers to build awareness of common vulnerabilities specific to our stack. In the design phase, we incorporate threat modeling for security-sensitive features, identifying potential attack vectors early. Our development process includes automated security scanning in the CI pipeline using tools like Snyk or SonarQube to catch known vulnerability patterns. We supplement this with manual code reviews that specifically look for security issues beyond what automated tools catch. For deployment, we follow least-privilege principles and use infrastructure-as-code with security configurations version-controlled. We also conduct regular penetration testing – both scheduled comprehensive audits and bug bounty programs for continuous feedback. Most importantly, when we find security issues, we treat them as learning opportunities, documenting root causes and updating our practices to prevent similar issues."

Mediocre Response: "We work with our security team to run periodic scans of our codebase and dependencies for vulnerabilities. Developers are expected to follow our security guidelines during implementation, and security issues get prioritized in our backlog. We do code reviews with security in mind and have automated checks in our build pipeline. When the security team reports issues, we address them quickly."

Poor Response: "Our security team handles most security concerns and provides guidelines we try to follow. We make sure to update dependencies when critical vulnerabilities are announced. Before major releases, the security team does a review of our code and we fix any issues they find. We also rely on our cloud provider's security features for infrastructure security. If security issues come up, we prioritize them based on their severity."

7. How do you approach implementing and improving CI/CD pipelines?

Great Response: "I view CI/CD as a critical enabler of team velocity and quality, not just an operational concern. When building or improving pipelines, I focus on three key aspects: reliability, speed, and feedback quality. First, reliability means treating pipeline code with the same rigor as product code – version controlled, tested, and with clear ownership. For speed, we analyze pipeline execution time regularly, identifying bottlenecks and implementing optimizations like parallel execution, test splitting, or caching strategies. For feedback quality, we ensure failures are actionable and clear, with detailed logs and notifications reaching the right people. Beyond the technical aspects, I measure success through metrics like deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and time to restore service – the DORA metrics. And crucially, I work to build a team culture where everyone feels ownership of deployment infrastructure, rather than siloing this knowledge."

Mediocre Response: "Our CI/CD pipeline automatically runs tests, builds artifacts, and can deploy to different environments. When issues arise, we address them promptly since pipeline problems block everyone's work. We've added various checks over time like linting, security scanning, and performance tests. We try to keep build times reasonable by optimizing slow tests. I regularly ask the team for feedback on what could be improved in our deployment process."

Poor Response: "We have a CI/CD setup that handles our basic needs for building and deploying code. When developers complain about specific issues like flaky tests or slow builds, we investigate and fix them. Our DevOps team manages most pipeline changes, though we provide requirements for what checks we need. As long as the pipeline reliably deploys our code, we focus more on feature development than pipeline optimization."

8. How do you approach monitoring and observability for your systems?

Great Response: "I believe effective monitoring and observability requires an evolution from reactive to proactive to predictive capabilities. We've built a multi-layered approach: infrastructure metrics give us system health, application metrics reveal business-impact performance, distributed tracing helps with complex request flows, and structured logging provides context for debugging. But collecting data isn't enough – we've defined clear SLIs and SLOs that map to user experience, with alerts tied to these business-relevant thresholds rather than raw resource metrics. Each alert has an accompanying runbook or troubleshooting guide. We've implemented observability as code, so our monitoring evolves alongside our applications rather than being an afterthought. We conduct regular 'observability reviews' where we analyze whether our current telemetry adequately explains recent incidents or performance issues, and improve accordingly. This has transformed how we operate – we now often detect and resolve issues before users notice them."

Mediocre Response: "We use monitoring tools to track system health and performance. We have dashboards showing key metrics and alerts set up for when things go wrong. Developers add logging to help with debugging issues. When we deploy new features, we make sure to update our monitoring to cover them. During incidents, we rely on these tools to help us identify the root cause quickly."

Poor Response: "We have basic monitoring in place that alerts us when services go down or error rates spike. Our operations team handles most of the monitoring setup and alerts. When we have production issues, we check logs to figure out what happened. We add more monitoring when we encounter problems that weren't caught by our existing alerts."

9. How do you evaluate new technologies or frameworks for potential adoption by your team?

Great Response: "I approach technology evaluation as a structured, evidence-based process. First, we clearly define the problem we're trying to solve and the criteria for success – including performance needs, ecosystem maturity, learning curve, and alignment with our team's skills. We then research multiple options, narrowing to a shortlist for deeper evaluation. For serious candidates, we create small proof-of-concepts that test the technology against our specific use cases, not just hello-world examples. We also consider maintenance aspects beyond initial implementation – community support, release cadence, security track record, and compatibility with our existing systems. I involve multiple team members in evaluations to get diverse perspectives and build buy-in. For significant adoptions, we implement a progressive rollout strategy – starting with low-risk applications before wider use. Finally, we document our evaluation process and findings so future decisions can build on this knowledge rather than starting from scratch."

Mediocre Response: "When considering new technologies, I research what others in the industry are using for similar problems. I'll identify the pros and cons of each option and discuss them with the team. For promising technologies, we might run a small proof-of-concept to test it against our requirements. I consider factors like learning curve, community support, and compatibility with our existing stack. Before making a final decision, I consult with other technical leaders in the company to ensure alignment."

Poor Response: "I stay updated on industry trends and listen to what developers on my team are interested in using. When a new project comes up, we evaluate if it's a good opportunity to try something new. I prefer technologies with good documentation and community adoption. If a technology seems promising and the team is excited about it, we'll give it a try on a real project – that's the best way to learn if it works for us."

10. How do you handle incidents and outages in production systems?

Great Response: "My approach to incident management focuses on both effective resolution and continuous improvement. When an incident occurs, we follow a clear protocol: identify a single incident commander, establish communication channels, focus on service restoration before root cause analysis, and communicate transparently with stakeholders using templated status updates at regular intervals. We use a severity classification system to appropriately scale our response. After resolution, we conduct blameless postmortems focused on systemic improvements rather than individual mistakes. These postmortems produce specific, assigned action items across multiple categories – monitoring improvements, process changes, architectural updates, or additional testing. We track these action items to completion and measure their effectiveness in preventing similar incidents. Over time, we've built a knowledge base of incident patterns and resolutions that has significantly reduced our mean time to resolve. Most importantly, we celebrate learning from incidents rather than punishing involvement in them, which encourages rapid reporting and collaborative resolution."

Mediocre Response: "We have an on-call rotation and incident response procedure. When issues occur, we quickly determine severity and assemble the necessary people to address it. We focus first on restoring service, then understanding root cause. After resolving the incident, we document what happened and identify action items to prevent similar issues. We try to improve our monitoring based on each incident so we can detect problems earlier next time."

Poor Response: "When we have an outage, whoever discovers it alerts the team and we work together to fix it as quickly as possible. Our most experienced engineers usually take the lead on troubleshooting. Once we've resolved the immediate issue, we discuss what happened and what we could do differently. We add fixes to our backlog and prioritize them along with other work. We've gotten pretty good at firefighting and usually resolve issues quickly."

Behavioral/Cultural Fit Questions

11. How do you handle disagreements between team members on technical approaches?

Great Response: "I view technical disagreements as opportunities for team growth rather than problems to minimize. When disagreements arise, I first ensure the discussion remains focused on trade-offs between approaches rather than personal preferences. I ask each person to articulate not just their solution but the underlying priorities and assumptions driving their recommendation. Often disagreements stem from different implicit weightings of factors like development speed, maintainability, or performance. I create space for healthy debate through structured discussions like architecture review meetings, where we can explore options with documentation and objective criteria. For significant decisions without a clear technical winner, I might use decision matrices that make our evaluation factors explicit. If consensus still can't be reached after thorough discussion, I'll make a clear decision while acknowledging the valid points from alternative viewpoints. Afterward, I make sure we document not just the decision but the context and reasoning, so future team members understand why we chose that direction."

Mediocre Response: "I encourage team members to explain their reasoning and listen to each other's perspectives. If they can't reach agreement on their own, I'll facilitate a discussion where each side presents their approach. We try to find common ground or a hybrid solution that addresses the key concerns. When necessary, I'll make the final call based on what I think is best for the project, explaining my reasoning so everyone understands the decision even if they don't fully agree with it."

Poor Response: "I usually let the more experienced developer make the call since they typically have better judgment about technical matters. If the disagreement is affecting team productivity, I'll step in and make a decision so we can move forward. Technical disagreements shouldn't slow down our delivery, so sometimes we need to table discussions and go with the simplest approach that meets our immediate needs."

12. How do you approach mentoring and developing engineers on your team?

Great Response: "I believe effective development requires a personalized approach that evolves with each engineer's career stage. I start by understanding each person's career aspirations, strengths, and growth areas through regular 1:1s – not just progress updates but genuine career conversations. For development planning, I use a 70-20-10 model: 70% learning through challenging work assignments, 20% through relationships and feedback, and 10% through formal training. I match engineers to projects that stretch them in their growth areas while setting them up for success with adequate support. Beyond project work, I create teaching opportunities like architecture reviews, lunch-and-learns, and code reviews where knowledge sharing is an explicit goal. I also connect team members with mentors outside our immediate team for broader perspective. Most importantly, I view failures as essential learning opportunities and create a psychologically safe environment where taking smart risks is encouraged, not punished. I measure my success as a mentor by how my team members grow in technical depth, leadership capabilities, and career progression."

Mediocre Response: "I hold regular 1:1s with each team member to discuss their career goals and areas they want to develop. I try to assign them work that will help them grow while still meeting project needs. For junior engineers, I pair them with more senior team members on complex tasks. I encourage everyone to participate in code reviews as both reviewers and submitters. I also point team members to relevant learning resources or training opportunities when available."

Poor Response: "I identify which engineers show potential and give them increasingly challenging assignments to help them grow. Team members can reach out if they need guidance, and I provide feedback during our performance review cycles. We have code reviews where engineers can learn from each other. I encourage people to attend conferences or training when our budget allows. Mostly, I find engineers learn best by doing the work and figuring things out."

13. How do you prioritize and balance competing demands on your team's time and resources?

Great Response: "Prioritization is fundamentally about making transparent trade-offs aligned with business objectives. I start by ensuring all work is visible – not just planned features but also support requests, tech debt, and unplanned work. We categorize work using frameworks like the Eisenhower matrix (urgent/important) or ICE scoring (impact/confidence/effort) to provide structure. I collaborate closely with product and business stakeholders to understand the strategic importance of different initiatives, connecting technical work to business outcomes wherever possible. For managing competing demands, I use a capacity allocation approach – dedicating percentages of our capacity to different work categories like new features (60%), maintenance (20%) and technical improvements (20%), adjusting these ratios based on current needs. This protects us from focusing solely on urgent work at the expense of important improvements. When true conflicts arise, I make decisions based on data where possible – customer impact, revenue potential, or technical risk – and clearly communicate both what we're doing and what we're deferring. Most importantly, I shield the team from constant context-switching by batching similar types of work and establishing clear escalation paths for genuinely urgent issues."

Mediocre Response: "I work with product management to understand business priorities and translate those into technical priorities for the team. We maintain a backlog ranked by priority and team capacity. When new requests come in, I evaluate their urgency against our existing commitments. If something truly urgent arises, I'll work with stakeholders to determine what can be delayed. I try to reserve some capacity for maintenance and tech debt work alongside feature development. Regular communication with stakeholders helps manage expectations about what we can deliver and when."

Poor Response: "We follow the priorities set by product management and leadership for most of our work. When urgent issues come up, we address them first and then return to our planned work. If we get too many competing requests, I ask management to tell us which ones we should focus on first. We try to be responsive to business needs while still completing our committed work for the sprint. Sometimes we have to work extra to handle everything that comes our way."

14. How do you promote diversity and inclusion within your engineering team?

Great Response: "I approach diversity and inclusion as fundamental to team excellence, not separate from it. It starts with recruitment – we've broadened our candidate sources beyond traditional channels, using diverse job boards and community partnerships. We've standardized our interview process with consistent questions and rubrics to reduce bias, and ensure diverse interview panels. For retention and growth, I've implemented practices like rotating meeting facilitators and project leads to ensure all voices get development opportunities. I actively monitor speaking time in meetings and create structured ways for quieter team members to contribute. For technical discussions, we use techniques like written proposals and asynchronous feedback to ensure ideas are evaluated on merit rather than presentation style. I regularly review our processes for unintentional barriers, like scheduling team events during school pickup times. Most importantly, I address micro-aggressions and exclusionary behavior directly when I observe them, making it clear that an inclusive environment is non-negotiable. These efforts have yielded measurable improvements in both team diversity and overall performance metrics."

Mediocre Response: "I try to ensure we consider diverse candidates when hiring by looking beyond our usual recruitment channels. During interviews, we use consistent evaluation criteria for all candidates. On the team, I make sure everyone gets a chance to speak in meetings and that their contributions are recognized. I encourage team members to respect different perspectives and working styles. When planning team activities, I try to choose options that are accessible to everyone."

Poor Response: "We hire based on merit and technical skills, focusing on finding the best person for the job regardless of background. I treat everyone equally and maintain the same expectations for all team members. I believe in creating a professional environment where people can focus on the work rather than differences. Our team culture is based on technical excellence and collaboration."

15. How do you handle a situation where your team is consistently missing deadlines?

Great Response: "Missed deadlines are typically symptoms of deeper issues rather than the core problem. When facing this pattern, I first collect data to understand the nature of the misses – are they consistent across projects or specific to certain types, are estimates wildly off or just slightly, and are particular phases causing bottlenecks? With this context, I'd examine potential root causes: scope creep, estimation problems, unexpected technical challenges, or resource constraints. I bring the team together for an honest retrospective, focusing on systemic issues rather than individual performance. Based on findings, we might implement changes like more granular work breakdown, buffer time for unknowns, clearer definition of done, or improved cross-team dependencies. Critically, I'd also examine if our deadlines themselves are realistic and properly prioritized – sometimes the issue is committing to too many concurrent priorities. Once we've identified improvements, we implement them as experiments with clear success metrics. Throughout this process, I maintain transparent communication with stakeholders about our progress and realistic timelines. The goal isn't just meeting arbitrary dates but establishing predictable, sustainable delivery."

Mediocre Response: "I would analyze our recent projects to identify patterns in why we're missing deadlines. Are our estimates too optimistic? Are requirements changing mid-project? Once I understand the main factors, I'd adjust our planning process accordingly – maybe adding more buffer time or breaking work into smaller deliverables. I'd also have a team discussion about obstacles they're facing and how we could improve. For stakeholders, I'd set more realistic expectations while we work on improving our delivery process."

Poor Response: "I would look more closely at our workflow to find inefficiencies and bottlenecks. We probably need to improve our estimation process or add more structure to our sprint planning. I'd ask team members to provide more detailed status updates so we can catch delays earlier. For critical deadlines, I might ask the team to put in extra effort temporarily to get back on track. I'd also manage stakeholder expectations better about what we can realistically deliver."

16. How do you handle giving difficult feedback to team members?

Great Response: "I view difficult feedback as an investment in someone's growth rather than criticism. My approach follows a consistent framework while adapting to individual needs. First, I prepare thoroughly – gathering specific examples and focusing on patterns rather than isolated incidents. I deliver feedback promptly after observations, in private, starting with my positive intent to help them succeed. I use the situation-behavior-impact model: describing the specific situation, the observed behavior without judgment, and the impact it had on the team or project. Then crucially, I shift to collaborative problem-solving – asking questions about their perspective and working together on improvement strategies. I document our discussion and agreed action items, then schedule explicit follow-ups to provide support and acknowledge improvements. I've found that normalizing feedback in all directions – including encouraging the team to give me feedback – creates a culture where constructive criticism is seen as valuable rather than threatening. The most important element is psychological safety – ensuring people know their overall value isn't diminished by areas needing improvement."

Mediocre Response: "I prepare for difficult feedback conversations by planning what I want to say and gathering specific examples. I schedule a private meeting and try to be direct but respectful. I explain the issue, its impact, and what needs to change. I listen to their perspective and work together on a plan for improvement. Afterward, I make sure to notice and acknowledge progress on the issue. I try to balance constructive criticism with recognition of their strengths and contributions."

Poor Response: "I address issues as they arise rather than letting them build up. In our one-on-ones, I point out where someone needs to improve and explain what good performance looks like. I try to be straightforward so there's no confusion about expectations. If they're receptive to the feedback, I offer guidance on how to improve. I follow up in subsequent meetings to check if they're making progress on the areas we discussed."

17. How do you manage work-life balance for yourself and your team?

Great Response: "I approach work-life balance as a systemic issue requiring both cultural and structural solutions. For the team, I focus on sustainable pace rather than heroics – we measure success by consistent output over time, not bursts of productivity followed by burnout. Practically, this means realistic capacity planning, protecting against scope creep, and treating overtime as a system failure to address rather than a solution to schedule pressure. I actively model healthy boundaries by being transparent about my own working hours, taking vacation time fully disconnected, and avoiding after-hours communications except for true emergencies. We use team working agreements that define core collaboration hours while allowing flexibility for individual preferences and life circumstances. I regularly check workload distribution in one-on-ones and team health metrics in retrospectives. When crunch periods are truly unavoidable, we time-box them, define clear success criteria, and plan explicit recovery time afterward. Most importantly, I recognize that work-life balance looks different for each person, so I focus on outcomes and trust rather than visible presence or rigid schedules."

Mediocre Response: "I believe that sustainable productivity comes from well-rested, engaged team members. I encourage people to set boundaries around their work hours and take their vacation time. I try to plan our work to avoid crunch periods, though sometimes deadlines require extra effort. I check in with team members who seem to be working excessive hours to see if they need help prioritizing or distributing work. I also model good habits myself by not sending emails on weekends or expecting immediate responses outside normal hours."

Poor Response: "I trust my team members to manage their own time and workload. We're focused on delivering results, not counting hours. When people need time off, they can take it as long as their work is covered. During critical project phases, we sometimes need to put in extra effort, but I try to keep these periods limited. I encourage people to speak up if they feel overwhelmed so we can reprioritize or get additional resources if possible."

18. How do you address underperformance in your team?

Great Response: "I view performance management as primarily about removing barriers to success rather than applying pressure. When I notice someone underperforming, my first step is curiosity – understanding if the issue stems from skill gaps, motivation misalignment, personal challenges, or unclear expectations. I have a direct, private conversation focused on specific observable behaviors and their impact, asking open questions to understand their perspective. Together, we develop an improvement plan with clear, measurable goals and regular checkpoints, identifying what support they need – whether additional training, mentorship, or temporary workload adjustments. I document our discussions and agreements to ensure shared understanding. Throughout this process, I balance accountability with empathy, recognizing that performance issues often have complex causes. If performance doesn't improve despite clear feedback and appropriate support, I follow a progressive approach – moving from verbal coaching to written performance improvement plans with HR involvement when necessary. Most importantly, I work to create an environment where asking for help is encouraged, so performance issues can be addressed early before they become severe."

Mediocre Response: "When I notice underperformance, I schedule a one-on-one to discuss my observations. I try to understand if there are specific obstacles or misunderstandings affecting their work. Together, we set clear expectations for improvement with measurable goals and a reasonable timeframe. I provide more frequent check-ins during this period and try to give them opportunities to succeed. If the issues persist, I document the performance concerns more formally and work with HR on next steps. Throughout the process, I try to be fair and give them a genuine chance to improve."

Poor Response: "I address performance issues promptly by explaining where someone isn't meeting expectations. I clarify what good performance looks like in their role and set deadlines for improvement. I might reassign them to tasks better suited to their abilities while they work on improving. If they don't show sufficient progress despite feedback, I'll start more formal performance management procedures with HR. It's important to maintain team standards and ensure everyone is contributing appropriately."

19. How do you foster innovation within your engineering team?

Great Response: "I believe innovation thrives at the intersection of psychological safety, structured experimentation, and business alignment. First, I create safety by celebrating learning from failed experiments as much as successful ones, explicitly separating ideation from evaluation phases, and ensuring all team members can contribute regardless of seniority. For structure, we allocate dedicated innovation time – both regular 'innovation days' where people explore their own ideas and focused 'innovation sprints' targeting specific business challenges. We've established a lightweight process for moving from idea to experiment, with small innovation grants that don't require extensive approval for initial exploration. To connect innovation to business value, we maintain an 'innovation radar' tracking industry trends and competitive moves, and regularly involve product and business stakeholders in ideation sessions to ensure we're solving meaningful problems. For successful experiments, we have a clear path to production integration, with dedicated capacity for hardening innovative prototypes. Most importantly, we make innovation visible – through demos, internal tech talks, and recognition programs – which reinforces its importance in our team culture."

Mediocre Response: "I encourage innovation by giving team members some autonomy to explore new approaches. We occasionally hold brainstorming sessions for specific problems and I try to be open to different solutions than what we've used before. When someone has an interesting idea, I help them create a small proof-of-concept to demonstrate its value. I also bring in external perspectives through tech talks or articles that might spark new thinking. When innovations prove successful, I make sure to highlight and celebrate them."

Poor Response: "I stay informed about new technologies and encourage the team to suggest improvements to our processes and tools. When we start new projects, I ask if there are better approaches we could try. Team members who are interested in innovation can explore ideas during less busy periods. I focus innovation efforts on solving real business problems rather than technology for its own sake."

20. How do you collaborate with product management and other stakeholders to deliver successful projects?

Great Response: "Effective collaboration with stakeholders requires creating shared understanding across different perspectives and priorities. I start by establishing regular touchpoints with key stakeholders – not just status updates but forums for joint problem-solving. With product management specifically, I invest in developing a shared vocabulary and decision framework, ensuring we evaluate trade-offs consistently. Early in projects, we collaborate on determining success metrics that matter to both engineering and business perspectives. I've found that visualization tools like story mapping help bridge the gap between business goals and technical implementation. For day-to-day work, we maintain a single source of truth for requirements and status that's accessible to all stakeholders, with clear ownership for decisions. When tensions arise – like scope versus timeline debates – I focus discussions on data and user impact rather than opinion or authority. I also create informal connections through techniques like engineer-PM pairing sessions where engineers shadow customer calls or PMs participate in technical deep dives. This cross-pollination of perspectives has been invaluable for building trust and reducing the 'translation overhead' that often slows projects down."

Mediocre Response: "I maintain open communication channels with product managers and business stakeholders throughout the project lifecycle. Early on, I work with them to understand project goals and requirements, asking clarifying questions and highlighting technical considerations. During development, I provide regular status updates and flag risks or challenges promptly. I try to translate technical concepts into business terms and likewise help my team understand business priorities. When trade-offs are needed, I work with stakeholders to find solutions that balance technical constraints with business needs."

Poor Response: "I meet regularly with product managers to get requirements and provide updates on our progress. I make sure they understand technical limitations and constraints so they can set realistic expectations with other stakeholders. When difficulties arise, I explain why something is challenging from a technical perspective. I focus on delivering what's been promised, and if requirements change, I work with product management to adjust timelines accordingly. I try to shield my team from too many interruptions from stakeholders so they can focus on their work."