Cracking the Product Interview for Engineers
aka Are You Laying Bricks Or Building A Cathedral? Part of the Software Engineer Interviews Series, this time we're looking at what to expect during a Product Interview.
As an engineer going through the interview process, you’ll probably have to attend a product interview at some point. But why is this step necessary for software engineers? It gives a good indication that the developer can not only work on a new feature but also understand how the work they’re doing fits into the bigger picture — the product vision and roadmap, and that they’re also able to work with other non-tech people.
For the employer, it provides an insight into the person they’re going to hire: do they understand they’re “building a cathedral” or are they just another “brick layer”?
The story of three bricklayers is a parable with many different variations which is rooted in an authentic story. After the great fire of 1666 which affected London, one of the world’s most famous architect, Christopher Wren, was commissioned to rebuild St Paul’s Cathedral.
One day in 1671, Christopher Wren observed three bricklayers on a scaffold, one crouched, one half-standing and one standing tall, working very hard and fast.
To the first bricklayer, Christopher Wren asked the question, “What are you doing?” to which the bricklayer replied, “I’m a bricklayer. I’m working hard laying bricks to feed my family.”
The second bricklayer, responded, “I’m a builder. I’m building a wall.”
But the third brick layer, the most productive of the three and the future leader of the group, when asked the question, “What are you doing?” replied with a gleam in his eye, “I’m a cathedral builder. I’m building a great cathedral to The Almighty.”
(source)
What should you expect?
In this interview one or more product managers will talk to you about your experience working in different cultures and environments, how well you work in a team, how you communicate with both tech and non-tech people (your co workers, customers, stakeholders etc.), your ability to prioritise tasks, understand and contribute to the big picture. You should prepare yourself to share stories and examples of how you’ve impacted customers’ lives and why you value doing so.
These interviewers are also the best placed people to share customers’ perspective and provide insights into the challenges the company is facing, so don’t miss the opportunity to ask them questions as well.
Topics the interviewer might ask about
Your experience — Be prepared to talk about what you’re working on right now, why are you building that, what problems is that product trying to solve, what are the biggest challenges to making it successful, and what does successful mean? This section usually reveals several things about the candidate:
How much they care about their current product.
How well they understand it and explain it to a non-tech audience.
What are the issues they are experiencing the most pain with.
Did they think about solutions or simply accept that something is broken.
Your big picture thinking — Are you able to see the end result and how your work contributes to that end? How did the feature you last worked on integrated into the product vision? What’s the most customer impactful feature you have worked on and why? Give me an example of when you thought outside of the box. How did it help your users?
Your attitude — Are you proactive? Do you have the initiative to fix issues without being told to? How well do you react to setbacks? Are you transparent with your work? Typical questions might include:
Tell me about a challenging issue you had to solve.
Tell me about a time you had to influence someone.
Tell us about a time you faced failure and how you bounced back.
How do you deal with sudden shifts in priorities?
Tell me about a group project you have worked on with many contrasting opinions involved.
Tell me about a tough or critical piece of feedback you received. What was it and what did you do about it?
Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully convince someone to see things your way.
Your motivation to join the company and your connection to the organisation’s mission
The interviewers will want to understand why you’re considering working there. An interview is a two-way street so make sure they’re also a good fit for you. Typical questions might include:
What would make you want to/not want to work here?
What matters to you when you choose a place to work?
What does this role mean to you?
The engineering cultures you’ve been exposed to, and how you see yourself growing there — Topics may include agile practices, your approach to conflict & resolution, details about the company’s organisational and engineering structure, and communication and teamwork skills.
How was your last team structured? Was it cross-functional?
Tell me about a recent conflict you had and how did you solve it?
Metrics — What do you value? RAM and CPU usage? Database Reads/Writes? Code commits? Pull requests? Bugs fixed? Service throughput?
Numbers are important and can be a good metric. You should come prepared with stories that share your love of numbers. How they’ve helped you and how you’ve used them to shape and make decisions around features, releases and priorities. Also include how you measured success. Did these releases make a difference, was it the right difference? Did you have to roll back? All these will inspire the product managers you speak with. They will illustrate how you approach work, prioritize for customers and measure your own overall impact. Typical questions might include:
How do you measure the product’s success?
You’ve just launched a feature, how do you measure its impact, user engagement etc?
Tell us about a time you used data to influence an important stakeholder.
Tell me about a time you used data to make a decision.
Your current knowledge of the company’s product
Typical questions might include:
How would you improve the product?
What’s a feature you’d like added to the product?
How would you describe the product to someone?
What is one improvement you would implement for our product in the next 6 months?
Your prioritisation abilities — How you organise, plan, and prioritise your work.
Typical questions might include:
What’s your approach to prioritising tasks?
How would you prioritise resources when you have two important things to do but can’t do them both?
Describe a scenario which required you to say no to an idea or project.
How do you decide what and what not to build?
How do you make sure take debt is also prioritised?
Let’s say you’re building Spotify, what 5 features would you implement first? This might be a good question to see how the candidate chooses to prioritise the features and might lead into other discussions such as who the customer is, how to use market data etc.
How well do you know the customer perspective?
You should be prepared to share why you believe the customers use that product. Think about the different types of customers and how the product serves their requests. Could there be other type of users whose needs are not met by the product and what solution would you provide? What might prevent the users from using the product?
How to prepare
Develop your Story Bank
To easily tackle so many situational and behavioural questions, the easiest thing to do is to develop your own Story Bank of your past experiences. Choose 5 to 10 experiences that are relevant to you — ones you’re either proud of or learnt something important from. Before the interview, it would be good to think how would you map those stories to the company values you’re interviewing for, you’ll want at last a story for each core value.
When writing down a story, think of the who, what, when, where and why. A good starting point would be following the STAR method:
Situation — set the scene and give the context.
Task — describe your involvement in that situation.
Action — explain how you solved it.
Result — what outcomes did you achieve.
Once you have a story in place, think about the main lessons you got from it and how that incident shaped the way you now approach those situations.
Research the company’s interview process
Companies tend to focus on different topics and aspects. For example:
Amazon loves to interview candidates using their core leadership values.
Facebook interviewers tend to ask about your people skills such as the ability to manage conflict or dealing with difficult team members.
Closing thoughts
In the end, the best way to prepare is to actually jump into the action part and interview. The more interviews you go through, the more you get better shaping your stories and talking about them.