Technical Decision Making and Tradeoffs Questions

Frameworks and practices for evaluating technical trade offs, making decisions under ambiguity, and managing technical uncertainty. Candidates should be able to analyze trade offs such as latency versus cost, availability versus consistency, speed of delivery versus maintainability, and speed versus quality versus cost. Describe approaches to surface assumptions, run spikes or proofs of concept to reduce unknowns, make defensible good enough decisions, revisit choices as context changes, and communicate the program implications of architecture and technical choices. Interviewers will look for structured decision making, quantitative reasoning where possible, and a clear link from technical options to program risk and timelines.