Advocacy and Constructive Disagreement Questions
Share examples of times you disagreed with leadership, colleagues, or customer requests and advocated for your perspective. Demonstrate healthy disagreement: listening to others' views, building evidence for your position, expressing concern diplomatically, accepting decisions even when you disagree. Show that you can influence outcomes through persuasion rather than authority. At mid-level, demonstrate both advocating for your views and respecting final decisions by others.
HardBehavioral
0 practiced
A product decision asks you to implement a workaround you believe is technically unsound and may cause longer-term issues. Explain how you'd advocate for a better approach, what compromises you might accept to meet business needs, and at what point you'd refuse to implement a suggested path—describe both the technical and ethical considerations.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
What signals indicate a disagreement should be escalated to a manager or leader? Describe how you would document the issue for escalation, whom to involve, how to minimize bias during escalation, and how you would maintain ownership of the outcome after escalation.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
A product leader insists on shipping a feature that bypasses an existing security control to accelerate adoption. You believe this creates unacceptable risk. Describe your step-by-step approach to persuade them to change course: what evidence and stakeholders to involve (security, legal), alternative MVPs, mitigation options, and escalation thresholds if they persist.
MediumTechnical
0 practiced
Write an outline for a concise written RFC or email you would send to propose a design change that you expect some teammates to disagree with. Include the subject, one-sentence problem statement, options with pros/cons, recommended option and rationale, requested input, and clear next steps.
HardTechnical
0 practiced
As a staff engineer you want to change the company's standard deployment strategy (for example: move from big-bang to canary releases). Outline a multi-phase plan to influence platform, product, legal, and ops: pilots, safety metrics, rollback plans, stakeholder mapping, funding/training needs, and responses to anticipated political objections.
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