Google Management

Question 1

A situation when you deprioritized your team’s work for other team’s work

Answer 1

• Data logging format issue
• SS Tableau

Question 2

A situation when you went with a suggestion from your team even when it was different from your own

Answer 2

• Docker for WD. I suggested the team to create off-line development environment. The team was sold on docker butt did not want to build this off-line system. Instead, they identified areas which was blocker for them or will be in the future and built a system around that.

SS release - System was causing a lot of issues; I jumped in and we discussed solutions. One was that we allow user to leverage data warehouse caching directly. Team felt that the other changes (threading and fixing bug with unnecessary calls) solves the problem and performance won’t be user visible anymore. Team was already tired working for 2-3 qtr so I agreed that it’s good enough.

Question 3

What are the biggest challenges your team is facing now?

Answer 3

Outsourcing - lots of collaboration and challenges

Data Infra - Migrate quickly to solve dependency. Support existing system in parallel.

Question 4

How do you handle people who are not team players?

Answer 4

First clarify, what do you mean by not being a team player on one hand it could be someone not agreeing to the teams decision. on the other extreme it could be someone who is in like creating a cultural nuisance. For the latter case, I have zero tolerance, I will provide strong feedback and try to course correct or take action as needed for the situation where it’s a communication problem I need to dig deeper to understand the root cause, is there a simple communication issue with someone? Do we need to rethink our decision or do we need to disagree and commit?
Cultural issue example Edward
Communication issue, example Juan

Question 5

A situation you went beyond to communicate

Answer 5

• WD outsourcing. People (´･_･`) about job, tz issue and wlb, future of the product. Worked with leads on concerns; updates in all hands and meeting with each engineer and also separate meetings with individual functions.
• todea development and updating the studios and r&d teams - release papers, all hands update, stakeholder meetings etc

Question 6

How do you measure the success of your project?

Answer 6

Did we achieve our goals- objective
Did we complete the project properly - crash, estimates etc - mostly objective
Are people happy working on this project? - subjective via retrospective

Question 7

Situations where you had multiple solutions? How did you handle it?

Answer 7

Todea - benchmark

BQ v Snowflake v Spectrum

Question 8

A situation where you pushed back

Answer 8

DI layoff
Ruins V2
Todea client team work
Todea quality vs speed

Question 9

Describe some goals you set for yourself and how did you deal with them?

Answer 9

• Train managers to lead indirectly
• Identify future of war dragons and work staffing accordingly

Question 10

Tell me about a situation where you had to solve a difficult problem

Answer 10

• Overhaul data infra
• Recreate entire game servers in new ecosystem
• Hiring expansions when previously failed
• Solving WD’s profitability issue

Question 11

Tell me about a team project you worked on

Answer 11

ETL, BQ

Question 12

We all deal with difficult customers from time to time. Tell me about a challenging client-facing situation and how you handled it.

Answer 12

Ss marketing

SS wd product - slow to adapt; can’t do auto-migrate. Worked with the whole group to identify some key features they were concerned about and planned out the migration.

PX tool kept asking for features - synced with product and set clear expectations on what we mean by support and how to prioritize requests

Question 13

Describe a time when you improved a process with a limited budget

Answer 13

• DI FF slack bot
• Rebel Sky docker

Question 14

Tell me about a time when you made sure a customer was pleased with your service

Answer 14

KS (constant feedback, documentation, presentation)

BQ (Migration tools)
Ss migration
API Atlas

Question 15

Describe a time when you found it difficult to work with someone from a different background

Answer 15

Jim (support team mentality and non Engineer)

Jim (RTB and feasibility issue)

Question 16

Tell me about a time when you came up with a new approach to a problem

Answer 16

Redshift always crappy
DI FF slack bot
KS -> Todea aka central platform team
WD outsourcing to continue the product profitably

Question 17

Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem

Answer 17

• Redshift issues
• LSP needed caching
• Data Platform performance issue
• WD outsourcing eng skill mismatch

Question 18

Tell me about a time when you missed an obvious solution to a problem

Answer 18

LSP - Caching was necessary
Redshift
WD outsourcing language per engineer. We later realized better alternative is to split the tech stack per engineer instead of doing what we do best

Question 19

Tell me about a time when you took the lead on a difficult project

Answer 19

• Management challenge: War Dragons team. Revenue going down, motivation low; identity how to continue cost cutting and find successor of this while making profits.
• Todea: technically challenging and quite a large undertaking. Scale the team and incrementally build the infra and sdk to show business needs.

Question 20

Tell me about a time you recovered from a difficult situation

Answer 20

WD transition - I had data infra and creating todea when WD with 18 engineers was handed to me with 0 managers.
I fast tracked DI manager transition; I hired one manager and started training for another internal manager. Around the same time, VP asked to lose 33% of headcount to the new game.
It was a management nightmare. Train managers while maintaining a sense of stability in the team but also losing a significant headcount.

Todea collaboration issues - Chef had a ton of project requests. Most engineers were leading individual projects. Collaboration and integration was becoming a major headache.
I worked with the chef manager and identified ways to break the work into categories for multiple pods. We also agreed to create x-team pods with DRI for pm/TL and gave them full autonomy to manage their project. This was unique as the pods had no strict management chains. I continued collaborating with Chef manager to ensure things work smoothly from side.

Question 21

Give me an example of a time you faced a conflict while working on a team. How did you handle that?

Answer 21

Manager conflict: Layoff for DI, WD -> Chef, LSP tech choice

Peer conflict: Marketing SS, Runes V2

Report conflict: SS performance improvements, Docker for WD

Resolving conflicts: Juan, Yu Guan, Soul DU

Question 22

What’s your greatest strength? And weakness?

Answer 22

Strengths: Understanding root problems.
Mentoring people. Stakeholder management.

Weakness: Imposter Syndrome.
Direct communication.

Question 23

What is the most difficult decision you made and why was it difficult

Answer 23

Layoff - I trained them and even promoted a few. Not their fault. Had to be extremely objective to decide who stays.

WD outsourcing - First time in company history; jobs will be impacted; transition would be challenging.

Question 24

Tell me about the toughest decision you’ve had to make in the past six months

Answer 24

Letting Sol join WD team

Question 25

Describe a long-term project that you managed. How did you keep everything moving along in a timely manner?

Answer 25

Todea
Broke down the project into small chunks
Collective estimation
Build the roadmap and staffing plan
Checkup
Bi weekly update with team
Monthly leadership meeting for status and course correction prioritization

Learning
- risk assessment would be better if done by individual component
- Beyond 6/7 folks, staffing up has new challenges; specially when multi team/managers are involved.
- company Priorities changes and need to adapt

Question 26

An example when you had to push back to HQ or challenged a decision

Answer 26

• DI layoff - success
• LR tech decision - failed
• WD reduced staffing plan before investing in automation ???

Question 27

Let’s say you’re working on a major project and you’re in the weeds. How do you find your way out?

Answer 27

Depends

Question 28

Tell me about a time when you were not able to meet a time commitment. What prevented you from meeting it? What was the outcome and what did you learn from it?

Answer 28

• WD event release: UX complaint
• Todea feature delays (unclear reqs) - focus on clearing the requirements from stakeholders with paper trails

Question 29

How would you convince your team to adapt a new technology?

Answer 29

• Why do we need new tech?
• ROI
• Migration plan

Question 30

What is your project management philosophy?

Answer 30

• Vision: Ensure everyone knows the goals and motivations of the project
• Democratic: Planning and estimates are finally done by the team together
• Execution: I work as a coach making sure people have everything they need and unblock them to prepare for the big win

Question 31

What is your project management philosophy?

Answer 31

Mentor people
ROI and impact-based prioritization
Lead team with a strong vision

Question 32

What is your project management philosophy?

Answer 32

ROI and impact-based prioritization
Build MVP and prototypes to test your theory
Continuously evaluate priority

Question 33

A situation when you acted based on your team’s feedback

Answer 33

WD docker - local development wasn’t needed; instead build content scripts

SS - enough work done. Let’s move on.