Making Tough Decisions in Tech: How This Software Engineer Navigated Uncertainty and Cut Losses
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Complete interview transcript & analysis below
Enhanced transcript with interviewer insights
INTERVIEWER
Give me an example. Yeah, I guess it's a good one. Give me an example of a time when you had to make an important decision, design decision, coding, whatever, uh, in the absence of good data, right? You didn't, you didn't, you didn't, you just didn't have all the data you would have liked to have had, but you had to make a decision. You're under a tight time constraint, something like that. Um, walk me through it.
CANDIDATE
Uh, I'll, I'll clean on DBase again, um. So, I guess at both the beginning and the end of that. Um, The beginning, it's I did. Did you say, uh, uh, does it have to be a technical decision? No, no, OK, nope, um. So at the beginning of that, uh, obviously like, uh, going into a startup or considering going into a startup, uh, with just like a few other people is, uh, um. Big life decision cause I'm committing to Uh, all this Time and working with these people for Who knows how long. Um, And Mm Going in, um, the only person I knew on the team was Um, my friend from high school and college, um, but there's the, there was the CEO and the Um, attorney that they had, I guess he was the general counsel. Um, who are also on the team who I didn't know. So there was unknown there of The Um, most of the team, um, whether or not they The Uh, about whether or not we could bring a product to market, um. And I guess the unknown of how much work was, was ahead of us. Um, But I think Based on the opportunity that I saw and the potential market size, um, I made the decision to join that startup and, uh, we definitely learned a lot along the way. Um, and then at the same time, near the end of Uh, when Uh, David and I were, were working on the, on the startup. we had at that point asked to get in front of customers. Uh, several times. Uh, for feedback and That had never materialized, so we didn't really have information at that time. Like when Um, When we could. Um, Get improved, get uh realistic feedback from customers or when um, What the, I guess. The plan was for us to go to market. So Um, yeah, there was still potential there. The idea's potential is still there today. Um, but based on our information at the time, we had to. Say we've put over a year. Uh work into this and Um, Yeah, we could keep going and we don't know what that will, um, What will happen if we do, uh, aside from more time, uh, being invested in this. Uh, but based on our current Uh, the current Uh, behaviors we've seen, I think that, uh, we think it's time to, to cut loose on this.
Interviewer Insight
at this point it was a little unclear what the difficult decision was - was it to join the startup or to leave it?
INTERVIEWER
So, how and why was the CEO blocking you? I guess I, I, I'm not understanding that, how, how he was preventing you from talking to customers or even why.
CANDIDATE
So his role was that he had the connections in the oil industry. Uh, for customers who would have, uh, been or for potential customers of this product, uh, and he was also acting as the product owner. Um, and Saying we need these additional features before we get in front of customers and it was kind of a cycle of that. He kept. Uh, scope creeping because of his desires to have the, the product perfect before we got in front of customers.
INTERVIEWER
So you think he was operating from a place of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good?
CANDIDATE
I believe so. Uh, either that or. Uh, incompetence, I'm not sure.
INTERVIEWER
And so at any time, did you, did you try to go up, you know, obviously it's a small company, so go around as a bit of a strong statement, but did you ever try to get in front of customers on your own?
CANDIDATE
Um Yes, we, so one of my Uh, other high school friends is A landman, the, the role that this would see
INTERVIEWER
what is the name of the role?
CANDIDATE
Landman, OK, um. Uh, yeah, the, that's the job that this was seeking to automate. Um, so I'm
INTERVIEWER
assuming you grew up in Texas. If you went to A&M and you're talking about oil and gas, you have a friend who's a landman. OK, exactly. I used to live in the woodlands, so I, uh, down, down outside of Houston, so I was well acquainted with, uh, minerals and all the other
CANDIDATE
Anadarko
INTERVIEWER
and everything,
CANDIDATE
yeah, um. Yeah, so we actually did get on a conference call with him and showed him. The, our MVP and he validated the direction we're going and Uh, he was lined up to be a Um, his, I forget what they call it, like a, kind of like an agency where they have a bunch of landmen and contract out to oil companies. Uh, he was going to, whenever we were comfortable, get. Uh, a meeting with, uh, His agency to uh kind of demo it to them. Um, but our CEO kind of like Put the brakes on that.
Interviewer Insight
good example of Customer Obsession and Bias for Action; as a product leader/builder creating the opportunity to speak with customers is priceless. In this case, the candidate was also being actively blocked by his CEO. From the discussion, it sounds like the CEO was suffering from lack of experience, not a prescribed and sensible plan that was poorly communicated.
INTERVIEWER
Why and how?
CANDIDATE
Uh, just cause he was nervous about, I think the state of the product, you know. And I, I think and um Yeah, I don't know how that would have gone if we would have. Gone ahead cause like he, him and the uh general counsel had The majority ownership of the company.
INTERVIEWER
Got it. Tough situation. Tough, tough, tough, tough situation.
Interviewer Insight
This is another opportunity where the candidate could have done a better job explicitly answering the question as asked. The question was about making a decision without sufficient data, but what the question is really trying to ascertain is whether the candidate has good judgement. Without explicitly being clear about what the decision was (whether to join, or whether to leave the startup) the candidate leaves open the possibility of the interviewer making assumptions or potentially drawing false conclusions about the process and the outcome.
Expert Assessment
Interviewer assessment - would be used in a hiring meeting
Candidate did not adequately answer the question in terms of specificity relating to the decision made. There was no doubt a lack of information relating to both joining and leaving the startup. This is a small nit but an important one for the candidate; needs to ensure that they are not only answering the question but communicating the answer clearly without leaving the interpretation open to subjectivity on the part of the interviewer. If we use the decision to leave as the one intended, this was in fact a tough decision with imperfect information. What's not clear is whether this was the right decision. It's clear from the description of the CEO that there was likely systemic issues that were unlikely to be resolved in the short term. This is an opportunity for the candidate to be more specific in the answer to ensure that both the lack of information is clear, the decision made is clear, as well as whether it was the right decision and why.