Unlocking the Kindle Experience: The Critical Steps Behind Instant Book Delivery Explained by a Product Manager
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Complete interview transcript & analysis below
Enhanced transcript with interviewer insights
INTERVIEWER
Given That Uh, given that the, the job that you're targeting. Was called product manager technical. This next question is, is meant to be something of a technical question, but it's really designed to see how you think as a product manager. Um, in, in a former life, I ran, uh, the Kindle product management team, and, uh, I was responsible for all the, the reading services for, for Kindle, and I assume that you've used a Kindle or some sort of reading device in, in your life. Yeah, you've read on your phone or something. Um, the original promise of the Kindle was, uh, to deliver any book ever published anywhere in the world in 60 seconds or less. That was kind of the guiding precept of, of the device. And so if you've used it, you know, you go and you browse and you get to the store and you click buy. A bunch of stuff happens and now you're reading the book on your device. I, I want you to walk me through, and you don't have to, to, you don't, I'm not asking you to design the system as it is designed. I'm asking you to walk me through what you think is required, end to end from the time I hit buy to the time the book is now open and, you know, available for me to read on the device. What, what, what's all the stuff that needs to happen to make that happen?
CANDIDATE
OK. So in this particular context, uh, you're trying to, if I understand right, you're trying to buy a book from Kindle and you're trying to read any copy of that particular book on Kindle. Yes, correct. OK, so the start phase is buying a book and the end phase is reading the book on Kindle. Now, the books could be published by different publishers, or different publishing agencies as well in the market, right? Of course. Now, first we'll have to me as a technical product manager, so we'll have to look at, uh, the list of partners that they have and list of e-copies that they, so first we'll have to look at different partner channels, uh, to identify because it's different publishers. When I say partner channels, different publishing groups, uh, we'll have to ensure that we kind of, uh, have a seamless integration, uh, of the e-copy, uh. Being able to be fulfilled, uh, through the Kindle. So that's the first piece from to make at the back end of the supply chain of, uh, fulfillment. So that's the first piece. And for the user, uh, obviously, uh, currently I presume that, uh, the user is already having a, a snippet. So obviously when you actually sell a product you kind of share a couple of pages of that particular same book on the advertising piece of it. So that's where you kind of actually see. But uh on the actual fulfillment you'll have to ensure that you integrate this with these particular agencies and you'll will have to pass this money of this guest. Now you'll also have to think about, uh, about what if, what in case, what is the refund policy, meaning like what if the guest buys and says I don't want this book. Uh, halfway through it, maybe he bought it today and maybe we'll have to think about the policies that we'll have to come up and determine, uh, from the regular product management to determine like what is the return policy of an ebook purchase kind of thing. What if he kind of chooses to return or not ask for a refund, kind of that's one piece and how do we communicate that back to a, a ebook publisher. So from a technical standpoint we'll have to look at the channels to integrate the content from different publishers, uh. The ebook content reader and also ensure the security of to ensure that this particular Kindle reader is not violating any of the copyrights uh by republishing the data kind of thing, uh, so we'll have to build in a system to ensure these two aspects and the third aspect is on the on the written state of it. Uh, what, how would we kind of do process or negotiate with the publishers, uh, for that particular, uh, book that has been written, an ebook copy that has been refunded. How would we process the refund? So that's the dimension, uh, we'll have to, so these are the three aspects that I would be thinking. On the integration with uh, again to summarize, first is the integration of the content from multiple vendors, uh, to, um to the Amazon Kindle back end and the second piece is, uh. On passing off the refund aspect of it and uh ensuring the security of this particular product, the ebook product that we sell it through the Kindle, how will we ensure that, uh, they don't, they don't violate any of the copyrights, uh, aspect of it, or we pass on the copyright liability to the customer. And the third aspect is the refund aspect of it, uh, to determine how would we work on the refund, uh, if the customer chooses to, uh, buy or return the ebook version of the, uh, wants a refund for the price, not like the book and wants a refund.
Interviewer Insight
candidate approached this problem at too abstract a level and never addressed the specific network level or backend system level work that would need to occur.
CANDIDATE
Getting the book to the device. OK, so like I said, first is the content aggregation. So we'll have to look at, uh, where the content, we'll have to establish a channel of communication between, uh, the Kindle, uh, or the Amazon back end and the. And the publisher, that's the first chance content, uh, the way to securely get the data, store the data within, uh, within, uh, Amazon, and the second aspect is, uh, to be able to. Yeah To be able to ensure that this data is secured within. Amazon, that's the first establishing the channel of communication. And getting the data and storing it in Amazon, uh, I don't. Like at this point in time, I can't, I'm not able to think much beyond this particular aspect of getting the content from the publisher and storing it in, uh, Amazon back in and, uh, uh, selling it through the Kindle kind of thing. So end of the dates. Go on. Yeah, so it's like, uh, uh, 21 is procuring the product and 2 is selling the product. So procuring the product aspect is establishing a channel of communication between the publisher and Amazon, ensuring the contents from each publisher are stored and secured and accounted separately, uh. On the Amazon back end and the second aspect is selling the product on Amazon Kindle, which is like uh uh obviously we'll have to ensure that the the uh There's no preference between the vendors or between the sellers kind of thing. I'm sure it's a transparent way of searching the book and, uh, actually fulfilling it is because the data is already secured and stored, uh, from the publisher on the Amazon back end. So it should be, uh, it should not, it's, it's a straightforward, uh, e-commerce fulfillment aspect of it there.
Interviewer Insight
these are fairly direct follow on questions which should be of concern to a candidate if they hear them in an interview. The level of detail is not enough.
CANDIDATE
Uh, OK, OK, got your point. I'm only talking about the procurement aspect, but, uh, to be able to be able to read it on the device, so the first piece is you'll have to, uh, ensure that the device is registered with your Amazon account, or, uh, maybe I'm not sure if you want, maybe we'll have to ask on the product, uh, marketing side what is the idea of selling this particular feature. Are you, uh, uh, do you want? The user to read only on the Amazon authorized devices or any device of the user choice, provided he purchased it on Amazon. So will we allow them to use on our devices beyond, uh, Amazon, so beyond Kindle, that's the first thing to be confirmed. Uh, if I have to ask you, uh, are you planning to sell this particular e-commerce book beyond Amazon device?
INTERVIEWER
Are you, are you asking me?
CANDIDATE
Yeah.
INTERVIEWER
OK, uh, no, if you buy a book from Amazon, it's only available on Amazon devices.
CANDIDATE
Yeah, so we'll have to ensure that the technical aspect of it is, uh, taken care, meaning that the, the product of the e-commerce book or the ebook that you actually purchased, uh, will not be downloadable from your regular Amazon e-commerce, uh, profile kind of thing, and you'll be able to, to download it only onto the Amazon devices which would be Kindle. At this point in time, and, uh, that's the first part on the fulfillment aspect, uh, probably you'll have to see and you should ensure that uh the user will not be able to uh share or download it onto the on the device and uh export it kind of or printed kind of maybe we'll have to ensure that the print aspect of it because it's an ebook in order to ensure that it is not reproduced and reused in a. Uh, in a, in a way it kind of violates the copyright, so maybe we'll have to disable the print capability of this particular and we'll ensure that the book is only e-readable on the device, uh. Yeah. Uh, to be honest, like, this is pretty much, uh, a new line. Yeah, it's 312, uh.
CANDIDATE
OK, so say for example in the same context that you actually told, like if you're buying an ebook and uh you buy and actually fulfillment, uh. Because it's an ebook, uh, as an Amazon user, I would be, uh, as a user, I, if I put myself in a user's shoe, I feel like it should be instant because I'm buying it on Kindle and, uh, I should be able to read instantly on Kindle in order to achieve this particular piece. If it's a physical book, I understand that there could be a latency in the delivery of posting Bafoot's an ebook. I, I kind of, uh, as a customer, I kind of ensure zero latency, uh, when you actually buy an ebook, uh, you expect that ebook to be available, uh, immediately within no time. Now, in order to make this happen, uh, probably what you'll have to ensure is, uh, the. The payment aspect. Once the payment is processed, uh, you will have, we'll ensure that the product is already available, stored on the Amazon back end, not at the vendor, uh, not at the vendor, uh, back end kind of thing, not at the publisher back end, but it's stored on the vendor back end on Amazon back end, and then, and when the user actually clicks in. In order to ensure that there's no latency, uh, I would ensure that the product is already stored within the, uh, within the same, uh, Amazon backend systems and, uh, made available, uh, through user permissions for this particular guest. Once the payment goes through, you get access to the hard copy location, so you, you're not actually storing, you're not copying, uh. And another file of this product into the local copy of the Kindle. But whereas because we are limiting this access from the Kindle, so the physical storage will still be at one single location and you would be giving only the read-only access to that particular location. So that way you can ensure that. Uh, there's no latency in the download because if you have to download the entire book onto the local device, yes, there would be a latency, but if you have to just, uh, store it on the Amazon back end and you just give a read access from, uh, from the device to the back end, as long as you have an internet capability and you just, it, it should take as less time as to load a web page kind of thing.
Interviewer Insight
streaming is certainly one way to get content to a viewable state; candidate did not verbalize any thoughts on size of network pipes and what that would mean for latency of book download vs size, vs (for example) time latency introduced by credit card transaction clearing with a third party vs just doing it later.
CANDIDATE
Yeah, I, I presume like uh it it would be in the MB, so max like uh 5 to or maybe 15 MB kind of thing that's the size because I'm not sure uh. That's a good point actually.
INTERVIEWER
So it's, I guess it's immaterial how big a book is. Let's say I, I just want to understand how you're thinking about this, right? So if the book is 15 megabytes. As you point out over a, you know, a 4G or better line, how long do you think it takes to download 15 megabytes?
CANDIDATE
It should be instant.
INTERVIEWER
So then why would you need to stream the content if you could just download all 15 megabytes in one shot?
CANDIDATE
Uh, the reason why I said like, uh, Download could be because you never know what what kind of data that or what the Internet connectivity that they have, right? OK. So in this particular case, uh, maybe if you're operating from US, yes, you are right, uh, when you say like, uh, you have a good, but if you're operating from a remote, remote places, uh, where you have a less, uh, internet capability, so loading a one page at a time would require very much, say for example, you're operating from, uh, a remote African location where you have only 2G services. So where like a test if you have to download a 15 MB of data, it could take quite a significant amount of time, but whereas if you have to just display a page at a time through a streaming, probably it's very much faster because one page at a time is maybe a 0.1 lesson. It's in KB. So if you are still, it would still work in case of, uh, operating for the users from uh.
Expert Assessment
Interviewer assessment - would be used in a hiring meeting
Candidate presented an extremely shaky walk through of what would need to happen to enable an end to end transaction for a Kindle purchase. Candidate needs to understand that performing well on this answer has almost nothing to do with how close their description is to reality; the quality of the answer from the candidate is dependent on how well they are thinking through the problem, the level of detail the candidate provides, how well they are presenting technical knowledge in how they think through the problem space, and how well they respond to the follow on questions which are meant to test whether the candidate can get into a deeper discussion on topics for which they are less informed.