Dive Deep

Question 1

Tell me about a time when you had a complex problem that required a lot of in-depth analysis.

Answer 1

Situation

This goes back to the time when I was working as a Software developer. AICPA has released drivers to 20 new test centers. One day I was at the office around 6PM. I received an email from one of our test centers from Guam ( there time was 8 AM). That lab had issues; they were not able to launch the exam at all. They had 20 candidates scheduled for an exam in the same lab. I was about to leave my office. My product owners left the office and my manager was out of the country. She was on leave.
Task
I decided to stay late and work on this lab issue.
Actions
First I checked exam log nothing was revealed
I checked IIS log no help
I checked event viewer and found some authorization exception is coming
Next I search each application installed in the server and check their IIS to find out the authorization error. Finally I found the application where this error was coming.
Then I realized our driver was calling that app before starting. I was not aware of this driver’s behavior. I had to double check my code base and certainly it was calling
Then I added local service, network service role permission to that 3rd party app and that allowed authorization success
Result
Exams have started.
Results

On that day 20 candidates successfully appeared for the exam.
The fix was deployed to rest 19 labs and they were protected.
Our CTO send me appreciation notes and I was able to save millions of dollar revenue (1 test center $100k revenue could help 20 labs to deliver business 20x100,000 = $2M dollar)
Both stakeholders’ prometric and NASBA (National Association of State Boards of Accountancy) revenue was protected.

Question 2

Tell me about a time when you had to investigate a challenge in your team.

Answer 2

Situation
Working as sr. software architect in AICPA.
Team Members (Durga) used to underperform and were never able to deliver the work on time, neither were able to fix any bug independently.
The Director of Project delivery & Scrum master were aware of its good chance of higher level escalation.
Task
I took this as a challenge to understand what is happening and how to improve his level.
Actions
I spoke with him he had 3 major issues
Lack of server side coding skills
Lack of angular knowledge
Lack of understanding of overall architecture.
I did a coding session and explained our system architecture.
Also I asked him to make one server side prototype project after watching pluralsight courses.
Results
He started working on his own and was able to deliver tasks on time.
He started owning entire stories as well now he is leading 2 people in our team and performing outstandingly.
My director of project delivery and VP of software development are very satisfied with his performance and ownership behavior.

Question 3

Give me an example of when you used data to make a decision/solve a problem.

Answer 3

Situation
Exams did not crash on the client side and candidates lost their answers. This incident happened and this had a huge impact on AICPA business because candidates lost faith in the exam. Although he wrote answers, nothing was saved. (DATA LOSS)

Task
I took this challenge to investigate this issue and solve it also

Actions

First I checked the exam log file and found that while the candidate was giving the exam none of the client side logs were logged.
Next I found that in server side exam for that candidate was already crashed and client were unaware of it still candidate were writing answer.
Further investigation, I found that server had a threshold timer to check health of client and there was a network glitch and client were not able to send health check ping to server and server crashed exam. However, the client was still running without issue.
I applied one fix where I added another timer in the client to check if the server health check call did not succeed then crash the client side exam as well.
Results
This 2ble health check strategy made our exam more robust and I was able to protect data loss.
This fix was globally deployed in all regions and country
I saved globally 5 regions and 130 countries and 3000 test centers . It was a million dollar impact for both AICPA and stakeholders.

Question 4

Tell me about the most complex problem you’ve ever worked on

Answer 4

Situation
Driver was failing when it was rendered in hybrid mode. Our release date was nearer. In web mode it used to run however whenever it went to hybrid mode it used to fail. CTO and CEO were worried since this issue escalated as the release date was nearer.

Task
Work dedicatedly to fix the issue and make sure it gets delivered on time.

Actions
No logs were found, event viewer, IIS logs everything I searched, no clue was found.
This is a web application wrapped under windows form so there were many variables difficult to know what was wrong.
Then I started to list down what are the services we are calling outside one by one. I started toggling them.
Lot more steps were done finally realized that a worker.js was running and under that we were doing websocket logging that was making exam to crash silently
I removed the log from worker thread and exam run
Results
My VP was quite surprised and accepted the fix that I implemented
VP informed to CTO and we were under control this issue was resolved
We made our release in production and I was promoted to Development Lead role.

Question 5

Tell me about a problem you had to solve that required in-depth thought and analysis. How did you know you were focusing on the right things?

Answer 5

Situation
AICPA was in 5 regions and 130 countries. It’s a global business and they wanted to go to one more new region for India and china. My role was Development Lead and business gave me this responsibility to work on.
Task
I took this task to find out what are the divisions stakeholders impacted and where are the changes required to introduce a new region.
Actions
I had my past relationship with the Backend team since I had helped them on their various software issues. I spoke with the Backend team and got to know that they have no region concept. I asked how they did billing and invoicing. He told me we do by TEST CODE. Next I asked what the test code is and he explained to me that NASBA is giving them.
Next I was not aware of the NASBA team so I sent one invite to their representative and he was kind enough to explain to me that based on the PROMETRIC test center in a specific region they create a test code and send that test code to both prometric and backend.
Next I worked with Prometric and understood how they call differently as per test code. So they explained to me that per test code they have a service script file. Which invokes our exam.
Results
Finally I was able to interact with both stakeholders and came up with my final presentation to my CEO, president and VP the changes we require and the party who are impacted.
My director of business highly appreciated this investigation. They documented my investigation and kept it for future reference.
Business were able rollout exam in new countries successfully.