Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit

Question 1

QUESTION Tell me about a time you made a design decision where a lot of people had opposed you. Why did they oppose you?
OR
Tell me about a time when an idea you proposed was not agreed on. How did you react?

Answer 1

Title: Death to Public Media Index (PMI)

Situation:
With inception of the my current employer (Veritone), it created a “value add” offering that provided insight to non-O&O stations often for competitive intelligence
Veritone discretionarily selected sources to include without much customer direction
After several years, uneffective at monetizing offering and often an add-on
Offering created a financial drain with no real revenue offset
Restricted company’s ability to hire due to cash constraints

Obstacle:
Customer usage, contractually obligated, product differentiator, and expense

Action:
Led an initiative to determine whether the offering should be jettisoned
Solicited input from Success team that customer usage and value of PMI as low
Researched how often filters applied to sources not owned by the org/account
Developed financial models that est. expense projections (transcription service $.10 per hour + CPU $.05 + storage $.02).
Worked with Legal to identified customer with contractual rights to offering
Presented findings to executive team

Results:
Illustrated that expense rivaled that of the company’s largest business vertical, M&E
Presented data that showed only 5% of users searched/filtered outside of their stations
Recommended discontinuing the offering given limited customer use and high expense
Pitched curated, client specific offering at customer’s expense or offset by Veritone
Executives rejected proposal to discontinue offering due to its “strategic and long-term value”
Cost running AI models and compute was decreasing, storage is inexpensive and there was inherit value in offering and data
Perplexed; data was overwhelming – operating expense high; customer value low
However, a year and half later the offering was discontinued due to operational overhead

What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Are right, A Lot. Strong judgement and good instincts
Have backbone, disagree and commit. Conviction that offering need to be redefined

Question 2

QUESTION: Tell me about a situation where you had a conflict with someone on your team. What was it about? What did you do? How did they react? What was the outcome?
OR
Tell me about a time when you did not accept the status quo.

Answer 2

Title: Install aiWARE.js NOW

Situation:
Last month, developing a critical product capability on an aggressive timeline that I’m slated to deliver by the end quarter
Blindsided by the Platform team’s announcement that all applications need install a new app header bar and notification component
Although an unscheduled request, SVP Eng. and Platform PM state that components must be integrated and deployed in 4 business days
CEO mandate that it’s “mission critical” in order for a unify application experience (although not revenue generating and no customer ask for such functionality)

Obstacle/Task:
No capacity or resources for the unplanned task, and mid-sprint

Action:
Attended project overview meeting set by the Platform team the following day
Asked SVP Eng and PM if I could slot work into upcoming sprint to not disrupt my cycle and avoid a stressed out eng team, but they restated that the CEO is mandating the ask and timeline
“Anything short would be perceived as a failure and compromise a coordinated rollout”
Contested and shared that it was irresponsible to introduce code with little development, unit test and QA time before releasing to production
Reviewed documentation with developers and identified incompleteness and lack of installation instructions
Respecting the CEO’s ask, I diverted resources to project and set as top priority
Integrated component only to discover that Platform team was still actively building the capability and missing dependencies prevented me and others from deploying

Results:
Communicated expectation that future requests from Platform team provide advance notice, reasonable time to integrate and test, and complete development and documentation
QA team is on avg. 97% successful identifying bugs in stage when given a week of testing that was being shortcutted potentially exposing the customer to issues
Effectively mobilized an unanticipated request and contested irrational decision making for a better working environment

What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
-Have backbone; disagree and commit

Question 3

QUESTION: Tell me about a time where you had to make a controversial decision
OR
Tell me about a time when you had to step up and disagree with a team member’s approach.

Answer 3

Title: To OAuth or to not OAuth

Situation:
2.5 years ago, developing a minimal viable product in attribution
Corporate initiative to launch new offering in less than 6mo to take market share
Tight budget and timeline
Objective to determine product viability and phase development
The product required pairing the company’s service with the user’s Google Analytics account for data collection
User manually adds my product as 3rd party service within Google analytics granting permission after completing a few steps
Automated service linking via Google OAuth
SVP engineering heavily involved in product decisions given project importance/timeline

Obstacle:
SVP engineering advocated for manual connection path to Google’s service to reduce development time and speed to market

Action:
Evaluated estimates with and without OAuth service (2 days of development)
Worked with Design to compare the two workflows
Considered the impact to the user (OAuth significantly simplified setup)
Factored trade off and decisively pursued OAuth counter to the SVP’s preference

Results:
A more accelerant method to connect customers to the service
Avoided a higher barrier of entry to extract value from the product with potential fallout
Measured scenarios after implementation:
-Oauth workflow took 20 seconds
-Manual workflow took 4 minutes when referencing instructions
Appreciate SVP’s input given the overarching goal of shipping quickly but product viability would have suffered due to poor user experience

What this story demonstrates (skills, principles):
Are right, a lot
Have backbone; disagree and commit. Challenge decisions, have conviction