Structured Problem Solving and Frameworks Questions

Assessment of a candidate's ability to apply repeatable, logical frameworks to break ambiguous problems into manageable components, identify root causes, weigh options, and recommend a defensible solution with an implementation plan. Topics include defining the problem and success criteria, gathering context and constraints, decomposing the problem using mutually exclusive collectively exhaustive thinking, generating alternatives, evaluating trade offs by impact and effort, and sequencing execution. Interviewers will look for clear narration of the thinking process, use of data and evidence, awareness of assumptions, and the ability to adapt a framework to different domains such as product, operations, or analytics. This canonical topic also covers systematic analysis techniques, methodological rigor, and presentation of conclusions so others can follow and act on them.

HardTechnical

0 practiced

You inherit a product backlog with 1,000 items and no prioritization. Propose a scalable, data-driven workflow (people + tooling) to triage, prioritize, and sequence work for multiple engineering teams. Explain automation options, human review gates, SLA for triage, and how to keep the backlog healthy over time.

MediumTechnical

0 practiced

Explain how you would design and run an A/B test to validate a UI change. Cover hypothesis formulation, primary metric, guardrail metrics, sample size calculation basics, duration, stopping rules, and how you'd handle false positives from multiple comparisons.

HardTechnical

0 practiced

Write production-quality Java or Python code that implements a heuristic scheduler using Weighted Shortest Processing Time (WSPT): given tasks with weight (importance), duration, and optional precedence constraints, produce an ordered execution list that approximates the minimum weighted completion time. Explain when WSPT is optimal and when it can fail.

HardTechnical

0 practiced

You are asked to present a recommendation to deprecate a widely-used internal library. Draft an outline of a convincing one-slide summary and a one-page technical appendix that covers problem statement, evidence (metrics, incidents), alternatives evaluated, recommended timeline, migration plan, risk mitigation, and KPIs to track post-deprecation.

HardTechnical

0 practiced

You suspect cognitive biases (recency, anchoring, confirmation) frequently influence prioritization decisions. Design an experiment and process changes to detect the presence of these biases in your organization's decisions and propose practical interventions to reduce them.

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