What is your team’s composition?

  • Applied Scientists (model building), Data Scientists (data pre-processing and evaluation pipelines), Deep Learning architects (productionizing models), and 1x Manager and 1x in training
  • Overall: 16x (11 reports incl. managers + 8 model training + 4 productionization)

Can you give a specific example of helping a senior engineer grow?

  • Situation:
    • Senior engineer transition: A senior engineer in my team at AWS, who was responsible for building infrastructure for productionizing models, wanted to transition to AI modeling.
    • New skills in modeling: The engineer wanted to understand the process of training models, looking to gain more exposure and competency in machine learning. However, the challenge here was that this was an area where they had no theoretical or practical experience.
  • Task:
    • Facilitating transition: My task was to support them by matching them with the right opportunities or even creating relevant opportunities if needed, thus enabling their transition from an infrastructure-focused role to an AI modeling role.
    • Structured growth plan: The next step was to come up with a structured approach to ensure the successful growth of the engineer while ensuring alignment with both their personal career goals and business objectives.
  • Action:
    • Structured development program: After assessing the engineer’s current strengths and identifying the gap between their existing skill-set and their goal of becoming proficient in AI modeling, I developed a 6 month structured development program with OKRs, having two key parts: theoretical and practical. The theoretical component was designed to ensure the engineer was well-versed with the necessary AI foundations while the practical component focused on real-world projects where the engineer could apply the theoretical knowledge gained. This blend of theory and practice was critical for them to pick up the necessary skills, with regular check-ins along the way to assess progress and provide guidance, creating a feedback loop at every step. Ultimately, this created a strong support system for the engineer, ensuring a smooth transition into their new role.
    • Theoretical foundations: To lay a strong theoretical foundation, I provided the engineer with some of my AI primers on aman.ai, covering topics like supervised/self-supervised/unsupervised learning, Transformer architecture, training and fine-tuning LLMs, and model evaluation.
    • Curated learning resources: I also offered them a list of curated ML resources including key research papers, online courses, and tutorials to deepen their understanding.
    • Practical shadowing program: To build a strong practical skill-set on top of their theoretical foundation, I paired the engineer with an applied scientist working on training LLMs, during which they spent 20% of their time shadowing ML projects. To accommodate this shift in focus, I worked with the engineer to reshuffle their workload and deprioritize less critical tasks on the infrastructure side.
    • Hands-on experience shift: The engineer then transitioned from shadowing to hands-on contributions, gradually increasing their bandwidth to 80% on ML tasks, while retaining 20% in their original role. At this stage, I facilitated a gradual knowledge transfer process, ensuring their responsibilities were reassigned to other team members, allowing the engineer to fully commit to their new role.
    • 360-Degree Feedback for Transition: To finalize the transition, I initiated a round of 360-degree feedback with team members and XF partners who collaborated with the engineer, gathering input from the team to ensure everyone was aligned and supported the formal transition.
  • Result:
    • Skill acquisition: The end result was that once this process concluded, the engineer successfully acquired AI modeling skills, including model training, fine-tuning, and evaluation.
    • Relationship building: As a great by-product, they built a strong working relationship with the applied scientist on the team and other team members.
    • Future transitions: This structured process not only helped this engineer but could paved the pathway for future transitions on the team.
  • Reflection:
    • Structured support: In retrospect/hindsight, this experience highlighted/underscored/reinforced the importance of (i) playing my part as a manager to support my people in their career growth, and (ii) having a structured yet flexible process that combined theoretical and hands-on experience with regular feedback loops to ensure success.
  • Grow into the next level (grow vertically):
    • Situation: Engineer’s Interest in Career Growth:
      • Desire for Growth: An engineer on my team at AWS expressed a desire to move to the next level. They were a senior engineer and wanted to grow towards a staff engineer role, motivated by the challenge of tackling complex problems that would have a broader impact both within the team and across the org.
      • Support Development: As their manager, I aimed to create a structured pathway to address these skill gaps and enable their growth into a staff-level engineer role.
    • Task: Develop Technical and Leadership Skills:
      • Skill Gap: While they had strong technical skills, I assessed their gaps to the next level and identified key areas of improvement. Specifically, they needed to develop more project leadership skills, influence the team as well as XF partners with their technical expertise, gain experience with XF projects of a larger scope, and improve communication with both technical and non-technical XF partners to succeed at the next level.
      • Create Development Plan: Based on their aspirations and current skill set, the next step was to create a tailored plan to provide them with opportunities to work on larger projects, lead initiatives, and gain the XF experience necessary for the next level.
    • Action: Implement Development Strategy:
      • Quarter-Based IC Development Plan: After assessing the engineer’s current strengths and identifying the gaps to the next level, I chalked out a structured development plan for them with OKRs that spanned 3 quarters, focusing on advancing their technical skills, leadership competencies, and strategic project leadership.
      • Assign Ownership of Larger Projects: I assigned them to lead complex XF projects with a large-scope to build their experience in managing higher-stakes technical deliverables and influencing cross-functionally.
      • XF Exposure: I matched them to opportunities for XF collaboration and communication with both technical and less-technical teams including product managers, designers, etc. This exposure helped them build influence across teams and improve their communication with a variety of stakeholders. As part of this process, they also learned to utilize tools like the AIM framework to articulate project impact and strategy more effectively.
      • Match to Right Opportunities: To help them develop project leadership skills, I matched them to projects that required strategically aligning broader business goals to technical solutions. This also involved setting and managing project goals via OKRs, including identifying key metrics and performance thresholds. This gave them the opportunity to think beyond immediate execution and consider the long-term impact of their decisions.
      • Continuous Feedback: Throughout the process, I ensured regular check-ins in our 1:1s to provide ongoing coaching and ensure a feedback loop to monitor their progress and course-correct their development path, ensuring they stayed on course to achieve their goals.
    • Result: Successful Transition:
      • Gained Technical Leadership Experience: As a result, the engineer successfully demonstrated increased XF influence, strategic thinking, and leadership, ultimately positioning themselves for a promotion to the staff engineer role.
      • Improved Team Impact: As a great by-product, their growth not only advanced their own career but also strengthened the team’s overall performance, helping to deliver key project milestones more effectively.
    • Reflection: Importance of Structured Growth Plans:
      • Match to Right Opportunities and Support with Coaching: In retrospect/hindsight, this experience highlighted/underscored/reinforced the importance of playing my part as a manager to support my people in their career growth by matching individuals to the right opportunities that align with their strengths and goals. Lastly, addressing specific gaps through structured development plans, establishing feedback loops at every stage, and fostering an effective partnership are critical ingredients for achieving success in the team’s development.

Can you give a specific example of helping a team lead/senior engineer grow into management?

  • Situation: Senior Engineer’s Interest in Management:
    • Desire for Growth: A team lead/senior engineer on my team at AWS expressed a desire to move into management.
    • Skill Gap: Although they had strong technical skills, they lacked experience with people leadership, goal-setting, hiring/talent acquisition, and XF communication, particularly with non-technical partner teams—which are essential traits for success in management roles.
    • Grow Reports: As a manager dedicated to supporting and growing my reports, I aimed to create a structured pathway to develop their leadership skills and address their gaps.
  • Task: Develop Leadership Skills:
    • Evaluate Motivation: The senior engineer had already led a small team of junior engineers and managed deliverables over a couple of projects. I had a good understanding of their strengths, but my task was to evaluate their motivation for leadership and identify gaps to create a growth path. It was essential to determine whether a managerial path or technical leadership (e.g., principal engineer) was a better fit. Through discussions, it became clear they were motivated to lead by enabling others, supporting and growing their team members, and setting goals aligned with broader business objectives.
    • Create Development Plan: Based on their strengths and aspirations for people leadership, I aimed to provide the right opportunities working backwards from their gaps and create a tailored, structured plan to address these gaps.
  • Action: Implement Development Strategy:
    • Quarter-Based IC2M Plan: I gave a heads-up to leadership about our plans and chalked out a “IC2M” development plan that spanned 3 months. As part of this plan, they managed 3 direct reports while focusing on leadership competencies such as goal-setting, hiring, XF communication, driving results through their team—specifically addressing the areas they needed to improve to succeed in management. I facilitated a gradual knowledge transfer process, ensuring their technical responsibilities were reassigned to other team members, allowing the engineer to fully commit to their new role.
    • Assign Team Lead Role: (For senior engineer) I assigned them as a team lead to gain project management skills by leading a small team and managing deliverables.
    • XF Exposure: I matched them to opportunities for XF collaboration and communication with product managers, designers, etc. This helped them build leadership experience with both technical and less-technical partners. Additionally, they also learned to adapt communication based on the audience using tools like the AIM framework to articulate project impact and strategy more effectively.
    • Match to Right Opportunities: To develop goal-setting skills, I matched them to opportunities that required balancing high-level strategy with low-level execution. This allowed them to connect top-level business metrics with their team’s deliverables, ensuringbusiness alignment and driving impact.
    • Shadow Talent Acquisition: To help them build experience in talent acquisition, I had them undergo the training program that the company requires every interviewer to go through. I then got them to shadow the resume shortlisting and interview process, giving them insights into identifying key signals for strong candidates and conducting effective interviews.
    • Continuous Feedback: I provided ongoing coaching and feedback throughout the process to monitor their progress and course-correct as necessary. I focused on key managerial traits like empathy and communication, which are crucial for long-term success in management.
  • Result: Successful Transition:
    • Gained Leadership Experience: (For senior engineer) The engineer successfully transitioned into a team lead role, gaining experience in project management and XF leadership.
    • Foundation for Management: Over the quarter, they executed the plan and built a solid foundation for stepping into a management role. In 3-4 weeks from then on, they officially moved to a managerial role after the necessary approvals. to They now oversee a small team of five reports, and have contributed significantly to the team’s success. Monthly connection scores for leadership performance that offer a pulse-check for the team, have indicated that they have been an effective manager.
    • Improved Team Collaboration: Their development strengthened overall team performance and XF collaboration, helping the team achieve key project milestones.
  • Reflection: Importance of Tailored Development:
    • Match to Right Opportunities and Support with Coaching: In retrospect/hindsight, this experience highlighted/underscored/reinforced the importance of playing my part as a manager to support my people in their career growth by matching them to the right opportunities that align with their strengths and goals. Lastly, addressing specific gaps through structured development plans, establishing feedback loops at every stage, and fostering an effective partnership are critical ingredients for achieving success in the team’s development.

What is the difference between career support needed by a junior vs. senior engineer?

  • The amount of autonomy to be given is proportional to the their competency level/skill-set.

  • Compared to senior engineers, junior engineers require more hand-holding, regular check-ins, unblocking support – say for XF dependencies, etc.

  • Level of Autonomy: At a high level, the amount of autonomy given to an engineer should match their competency level and experience. Junior engineers often need more structured guidance and oversight, while senior engineers thrive with greater independence, managing complex tasks with minimal supervision.

  • Skill Development: In terms of skill development, junior engineers typically need more hands-on mentorship, focusing on developing core technical skills, understanding best practices (the dos/don’ts), and building confidence in solving technical problems independently. They benefit from regular feedback, code reviews, and opportunities for learning through pair programming or collaborative tasks with senior team members. Senior engineers, on the other hand, focus more on deepening their technical expertise, improving their ability to lead projects end-to-end, and expanding their ability to mentor others.

  • Problem-Solving Support: When it comes to problem-solving support, junior engineers may require more frequent check-ins and assistance with problem-solving, especially when dealing with XF dependencies or navigating unfamiliar parts of the codebase. Senior engineers generally excel at solving problems autonomously, but may still need support in complex system design, decision-making, or prioritizing technical debt.

  • Career Growth: For career growth, junior engineers often need guidance, including advice on how to align their efforts with the broader strategic vision and extend their influence XFly. Senior engineers often need support on leadership skills, mentorship of others, or stepping into more strategic roles like leading large-scope XF initiatives.

  • Stakeholder Management: Regarding stakeholder management, junior engineers usually focus more on delivering individual work, while senior engineers often need more coaching on managing stakeholders, communicating across teams – especially with less-technical or non-technical teams, and making decisions that align with business objectives.

What is your approach to 1:1s? What constitutes a typical 1:1?

  • 1:1s serve as a valuable opportunity to gauge the overall health of the team and have a pulse on the team’s day-to-day functioning. These meetings serve as regular touch-points to coach and grow people, build strong rapport (or foster strong working relationships), and offer constructive/productive and actionable feedback in a private setting, when necessary.
  • Guidance during these sessions is aimed at aligning the individual’s work output with broader organizational goals, while also ensuring a connection between their deliverables and their career development aspirations.
  • During 1:1s, I focus on understanding each employee’s strengths and career aspirations. I use this time to map their interests to opportunities that support their development. If there are gaps between their current skills and their professional goals, I work collaboratively with them to come up with a structured development plan. This involves analyzing gaps between to the next level, then working backwards to identify the steps needed to get there. For example, if an engineer is looking to expand their XF impact, I identify or create opportunities that provide exposure to relevant teams and projects, enabling them to broaden their influence within the organization. For employees aiming to prepare for next-level growth or grow into a management role (or develop new technical skills), I utilize this time to coach and support their development by ensuring they have access to the right resources, mentorship, and opportunities to bridge those gaps effectively. I also typically schedule dedicated sessions focused on career development for each engineer, especially if additional follow-up is required.
  • The cadence/frequency of 1:1 meetings is tailored to the seniority and competency level of the individual—particularly within larger teams. For more senior or highly skilled employees, less frequent meetings (e.g., biweekly) are often sufficient. However, for newer team members or those requiring additional support, more frequent check-ins (e.g., weekly) are beneficial to ensure continuous engagement and progress.
  • It is also important to check in on their personal well-being. Understanding how they are doing on a personal level helps build stronger rapport. Leading with empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence (EQ) is essential for effective management and can foster long-term loyalty and trust.
  • Lastly, 1:1 meetings are an excellent opportunity for me to solicit feedback from the employee to ensure that my own approach and leadership style are aligned with their needs and expectations.

How do you recognize leadership potential? / How do you identify candidates to become managers?

  • This question is about how the interviewee identifies candidates on their team to become managers.
  • Good: Checks motivations, empathy, leadership/naturally helping other on the team, solid communication, can provide specific examples.

  • Bad: Picks the best ICs, fails to mention checking for motivations.

  • If a team member demonstrates an interest to take on a leadership role, it is important to understand their motivation and observe for specific signals corresponding to core qualities such as:

    • Strong communication skills which should encompass the ability to adapt a message based on the audience, specifically their level of technical depth (technical/less-technical/non-technical) and metrics of success
    • Empathy, which involves understanding and relate to the needs, concerns, and motivations of their team, fostering trust and engagement.
    • Being effective through others by empowering team members by unblocking people, supporting and growing people, facilitating connections with other teams, etc.
    • Ability to drive cross-functional projects by effectively collaborating with various teams and departments to align on goals, manage dependencies, and drive initiatives forward across different functions and expertise levels by establishing consensus.
    • Aligning employees with suitable opportunities by matching their strengths, interests, and career goals with tasks and roles that maximize their growth and impact on the org.
  • A leader should possess a comprehensive understanding of both the broader, high-level vision and the intricate, low-level details, with the ability to shift focus depending on the audience.
  • Based on the individual’s motivation, it is important to determine if technical leadership would be more suitable, particularly if they exhibit strong technical expertise but have limited interest or experience in people management. Not all leaders pursue a managerial path; some may develop into technical leaders, such as a principal engineer.
  • If the candidate aligns with these expectations, I typically implement a three-month IC2M plan to assess their managerial capabilities. This plan includes supervising a few direct reports and evaluating key areas such as goal and direction setting, effective communication, talent acquisition, and driving results through their team. This process ensures a smooth and meaningful transition for the employee into their new role.

(M2) Can you give me a specific example of helping a manager grow? / How do you grow managers?

  • Identify and play to their strengths, coaching, align with opportunities, can provide specific examples.

  • Story 1:
    • Situation:
      • Monitoring Team Dynamics Through Feedback: In my current role managing a team of managers at AWS, I’m responsible for monitoring organizational health through a variety of feedback mechanisms, ensuring continuous awareness of team dynamics and performance.
      • Proactive 1:1s to Identify Challenges: Through regular 1:1s with my direct reports, I proactively collect feedback on team dynamics, discussing individual challenges and obstacles. In one specific sub-team, led by a new manager, this feedback revealed a decline in job satisfaction and productivity.
      • Anonymous Feedback for Deeper Insights: We also gather anonymous connection scores to assess several dimensions of team dynamics, such as inclusion, job satisfaction, manager effectiveness, manager’s technical skills, team’s adherence to company culture, etc. These scores indicated a drop in morale and manager effectiveness that hadn’t surfaced in direct conversations.
      • XF Feedback Frustration: Feedback from XF partners highlighted frustrations with delayed deliverables, despite the manager agreeing to timelines and scope.
      • Early Signs of Declining Team Morale from 360 Feedback: While this manager was excellent at setting technical direction and long-term strategy with clear strengths in these areas, the 360 feedback—personal, anonymous, and from XF partners—helped me identify that the manager was struggling to prioritize, which led to an overwhelmed team and unmet expectations with external partners.
    • Task:
      • Teaching Prioritization Skills: My responsibility here was to help the manager develop better prioritization skills to manage workload effectively.
      • Improving Cross-Functional Communication: I also needed to assist the manager in enhancing communication with cross-functional partners, ensuring clearer alignment on project expectations and delivery timelines.
    • Action:
      1. Coaching on Prioritization Using the RICE Framework: I introduced the RICE framework (Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort) to help the manager evaluate and prioritize projects more systematically. This method allowed the manager to quantify the business impact, assess the team’s capacity, and align the workload with the company’s objectives.
      2. Categorizing and Filtering Projects: Using the RICE framework, we reviewed the manager’s existing commitments and categorized them based on their score, identifying which projects to prioritize and which to renegotiate, postpone, or decline.
      3. Setting Boundaries with Cross-Functional Teams: I coached the manager on how to set clear boundaries with XF partners, politely pushing back on low-priority projects that exceeded the team’s capacity, while maintaining strong relationships.
      4. Facilitating Realignment with Stakeholders: I assisted the manager in realigning with cross-functional stakeholders by communicating the team’s bandwidth and refocusing on delivering high-priority work, ensuring all parties were on the same page.
      5. Timely Feedback for Continuous Improvement: I provided regular and direct feedback to the manager, reinforcing the importance of early issue detection and making adjustments proactively to avoid future problems.
    • Result:
      • Improved Prioritization and Team Focus: The manager became more effective at prioritizing tasks, using the RICE framework to make better decisions on where to allocate resources.
      • Better Cross-Functional Relationships: Clearer communication with XF partners led to realistic timelines and a stronger sense of collaboration, resulting in improved deliverables and reduced friction.
      • Enhanced Team Morale and Productivity: With clearer priorities and more structured delegation, team morale improved, and productivity increased, as the team was no longer overwhelmed by conflicting demands.
      • Better Manager Effectiveness: A positive shift was seen in their anonymous feedback scores, with a particular increase in manager effectiveness ratings as they grew more confident in managing workload and cross-functional requests.
    • Reflection:
      • Importance of Proactive Feedback: This experience reinforced the importance of coaching and targeted development, while still identifying and playing to people’s strengths.
      • Significance of Coaching on Prioritization: By proactively seeking feedback and coaching the manager on prioritization and communication, I helped this manager become more effective by improving both team dynamics and external relationships and grow into a confident and effective leader.
  • Story 2:
    • Situation:
      • Monitoring Team Dynamics Through Feedback: In my current role managing a team of managers at AWS, I’m responsible for monitoring organizational health through a variety of feedback mechanisms, ensuring continuous awareness of team dynamics and performance.
      • Proactive 1:1s to Identify Challenges: Through regular 1:1s with my direct reports, I proactively collect feedback on team dynamics, discussing individual challenges and obstacles. In one specific sub-team, led by a new manager, this feedback revealed a decline in manager communication and job satisfaction.
      • Anonymous Feedback for Deeper Insights: We also gather anonymous connection scores to assess several dimensions of team dynamics, such as inclusion, job satisfaction, manager effectiveness, manager’s technical skills, team’s adherence to company culture, etc. These scores indicated a drop in manager effectiveness that hadn’t surfaced in direct conversations.
      • XF Feedback Frustration: Feedback from XF partners highlighted frustrations with delayed deliverables, despite the manager agreeing to timelines and scope.
      • Early Signs of Declining Team Morale from 360 Feedback: This combined feedback—personal, anonymous, and from XF partners—helped me identify that the manager was struggling to prioritize, which led to an overwhelmed team and unmet expectations with external partners.
      • Insights from Reports: Through monthly team-wide connection reports gathered daily from everyone on the team, I gain deep insights into organizational health across several dimensions, including inclusion, job satisfaction, manager effectiveness, manager’s technical skills, and team’s adherence to company culture. The reports indicated that, while the manager was technically strong, they needed support in delegating effectively, providing clear and constructive feedback, and managing XF team dynamics to effectively communicate project status and expectations.
    • Task:
      • Develop Leadership Skills: My objective was to help this manager develop essential leadership skills. This included improving their ability to delegate effectively, provide clear and constructive feedback, and manage XF team dynamics to effectively communicate project status and expectations.
    • Action:
      • Identify Strengths and Weaknesses:
      • Coaching and Feedback Practice: I worked closely with the manager to develop their delegation skills. We discussed how to assign tasks that played to team members’ strengths and career growth interests, while empowering them to take ownership of the work.
      • Coaching and Feedback Practice: To build their confidence in giving feedback, I conducted mock feedback sessions, simulating real scenarios where they had to provide constructive, supportive feedback to team members. This allowed them to practice making their feedback clear, direct, and actionable, improving both team performance and individual development.
      • XF Leadership Opportunities: I also provided opportunities for them to lead XF projects, where they had to manage communication and expectations not only with their direct team but also with stakeholders from other departments. This helped them practice influencing and leading beyond their immediate team and build credibility across the organization.
    • Result:
      • Confidence and Delegation: Over time, the manager became significantly more confident in their role. They learned to delegate effectively, empowering their team members to take on more responsibility, which in turn freed up the manager’s time to focus on higher-impact work, such as long-term strategy and technical leadership.
      • Improved Feedback and Team Performance: The manager also improved in providing clear and constructive feedback. Their ability to give timely, actionable advice resulted in better team performance and enhanced employee development, as team members began to understand how to improve and grow based on more specific and actionable guidance.
      • Broader Influence and Leadership: Their leadership on XF projects helped them extend their influence across teams, resulting in better collaboration and alignment between departments. This increased their visibility within the organization and helped them build a reputation as a well-rounded and effective leader, both within their direct team and in cross-functional efforts.
    • Reflection:
      • Targeted Development Success: This experience reinforced the importance of coaching and targeted development, while still identifying and playing to people’s strengths. By using insights from organizational health reports and focusing on specific, actionable feedback and real-world opportunities, I helped this manager become more effective and grow into a confident and effective leader.

Can you tell me about a time you dealt with a performance “dip” or a low performer?

  • Background:
    • An efficient team is like a well-oiled machine – everyone should be pulling their own weight, if one person is holding the team back (being the team’s weakest link), its time for a discussion.
    • Criticize in private and praise in public.
  • Instance (successful scenario):
    • Situation:
      • Performance dip in a high-performing team: In my prior team at Amazon Alexa, where I led the query understanding and personalization team, one of the flagship projects we worked on was to introduce a year-end recap experience, highlighting the music and movies users had enjoyed throughout the year and suggesting what to listen to or watch next. Given that we were on a tight year-end deadline, every team member’s contribution was crucial. However, over a couple of back-to-back sessions of sprint review, we noticed that one of the engineers responsible for a crucial part of the project (building a RAG pipeline for the LLM) began consistently missing deadlines for their allocated tasks.
      • Impact on team productivity: Meeting the deadline for this deliverable was crucial as it directly impacted several other dependent tasks, both within the team and with XF partners. As such, the delay had a ripple effect on the rest of the team, blocking other team members and XF partners and ultimately, putting the project at risk of missing the final deadline.
    • Task:
      • Addressing performance issues: As an immediate next step, I had to root-cause the underlying reasons behind their lack of motivation and work backwards from it to provide a supportive path forward.
    • Action:

      • Initial Conversation (Empathy): I initiated a 1:1 conversation with the employee to understand the reasons behind their performance issues. I led with empathy, asking about personal or work-related obstacles. The employee shared that, after five years in a technical role, they no longer felt motivated by the work and believed that transitioning to a Program Manager (PM) role would better align with their skills and interests. My role was to ensure that I offer the right support to the employee while ensuring that our current deliverables didn’t lose track.

      • Structured Development Program: After assessing the engineer’s current strengths and identifying the gap between their existing skill-set and their goal of becoming proficient in program management, I developed a structured development program with clear OKRs that spanned 3 quarters. This program had two key parts: theoretical and practical. The theoretical component ensured the engineer gained the necessary knowledge in program management concepts, including project scoping, stakeholder management, and risk mitigation. The practical component involved real-world application through shadowing other PMs, and build some hands-on skills in this regard. I held regular bi-weekly check-ins to assess progress, discuss challenges, and create a continuous feedback loop, ensuring the engineer stayed on track toward their goal. This structure provided a solid support system for the engineer, which ultimately enabled a smooth transition into their new role.

      • Theoretical Foundations: To establish a strong theoretical foundation, I recommended key PM resources such as “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries and “Agile Project Management with Scrum” by Ken Schwaber. These resources helped them understand critical PM frameworks. We focused on topics like stakeholder management, risk assessment, and agile methodologies to ensure they had a comprehensive understanding of core program management principles.

      • Practical Shadowing Program: To build practical experience, I paired the engineer with a PM from a parallel org, where they spent 20% of their time shadowing key projects over the next quarter and building real-world program management skills. To accommodate this shift in focus, I worked with the engineer to reshuffle their workload and deprioritize less critical tasks on their plate.

      • Hands-on Experience Shift: After the initial shadowing phase, the engineer transitioned to hands-on contributions by ramping up to 80% on PM tasks, while still retaining 20% of their time in their original technical role to ensure a smooth transition. At this stage, I facilitated a knowledge transfer process, ensuring their technical responsibilities were reassigned to other team members, allowing the engineer to fully commit to their new PM role.

      • 360-Degree Feedback for Transition: To finalize the transition, I initiated a 360-degree feedback process, gathering input from the parallel team, their new manager, and stakeholders involved in the projects they had worked on.

    • Result:
      • Successful transition to a PM role: A few months later after the transition, I checked in with the employee and learned they were thriving in their new PM role. The transition had resolved their performance issues, and they were contributing successfully in a position that aligned better with their skills and aspirations.
    • Reflection:
      • Lead with empathy and active listening: This experience reinforced the importance of viewing challenges as opportunities, leading with empathy, and lastly playing my part as a manager to support my people by matching them to the right opportunities.
  • Instance (failed scenario):
    • Situation:
      • Performance dip in a high-performing team: In my prior team at Amazon Alexa, where I led the query understanding and personalization team, one of the flagship projects we worked on was to introduce a year-end recap experience, highlighting the music and movies users had enjoyed throughout the year and suggesting what to listen to or watch next. Given that we were on a tight year-end deadline, every team member’s contribution was crucial. However, over a couple of back-to-back sessions of sprint review, we noticed that one of the engineers responsible for a crucial part of the project (building a RAG pipeline for the LLM) began consistently missing deadlines for their allocated tasks.
      • Impact on team productivity: Meeting the deadline for this deliverable was crucial as it directly impacted several other dependent tasks, both within the team and with XF partners. As such, the delay had a ripple effect on the rest of the team, blocking other team members and XF partners and ultimately, putting the project at risk of missing the final deadline.
    • Task:
      • Identify Performance Bottlenecks: My responsibility was to identify the root cause of the employee’s underperformance and take appropriate actions to address it, while ensuring our deliverables don’t lose track.
      • Ensure Accountability: It was also critical to ensure accountability and support the employee through coaching and performance plans if necessary.
    • Action:
      • Initial Conversation (Empathy): I initiated a 1:1 conversation with the employee to understand the reasons behind their performance issues. I led with empathy, asking about personal or work-related obstacles.
      • Skill Gap Identified: During our discussion, the employee mentioned that while they were comfortable with fine-tuning LLM models, they lacked exposure to building RAG pipelines, which made them feel less confident in that area.
      • Shuffling Tasks to Maintain Project Progress: To ensure that immediate project deliverables stayed on track, I redistributed the employee’s critical tasks to other team members to avoid further delays. Additionally, I de-prioritized low-priority tasks and streamlined the workload for other engineers so the overall project timeline was protected while giving the employee room to focus on development.
      • Structured Development Plan: To bridge the skill gap, I implemented a structured development plan that spanned 6 weeks and included two key components: theoretical learning and hands-on practical experience. The theoretical component involved pointers to learning resources on RAG pipelines and relevant engineering concepts, while the practical component included tasks where the employee could apply their new knowledge under guidance.
      • Senior Engineer Mentorship: Additionally, I connected the employee with a senior engineer who had experience with RAG pipelines. The senior engineer acted as a mentor, providing guidance on the engineering practices specific to RAG pipelines and shadowing opportunities to help the employee improve their skills.
        • Hands-On Mentorship: The senior engineer reviewed their code, helped refine the architecture, and provided debugging techniques for pipeline-related issues. They collaborated on specific tasks, giving the employee real-time exposure to RAG pipeline development.
        • Regular Check-Ins: The employee and the senior engineer had meetings twice a week to ensure continuous learning and address any technical challenges. While I connected with the engineer weekly, the senior engineer also provided weekly feedback to me on the employee’s progress.
      • PIP Plan: Unfortunately, despite the structured development and support offered, the employee’s performance did not improve. I implemented a performance improvement plan (PIP) with 3 key milestones over 30 days, each tied to deliverables with clear, measurable expectations.
      • Frequent Check-ins: I conducted weekly check-ins to track progress, provide support, and adjust intermediate goals as needed.
    • Result:
      • Missed Milestones: Despite the structured coaching plan, the employee missed 2 out of 3 deliverables and did not meet the performance improvement goals.
      • Role Transition: Ultimately, we had to make the difficult decision to move the employee out of the role to maintain the team’s performance and project timelines.
    • Reflection / Lessons Learned:
      • Empathy & Accountability Balance: This experience reinforced the importance of support my people as a manager, but at the same time balancing leading with empathy with clear accountability to ensure that the team and project goals are met.

How did this person end up on your team in the first place?

  • I inherited them after moving in to this team after the previous manager left to a different team.

(M2) Can you tell me about a time when a team was underperforming? How did you know?

  • Pulse on Org Health via Personal and Anonymous feedback: The first step to detect any org-wide issues is to proactively collect feedback from employees. I achieve this by having regular 1:1s where I discuss individual challenges and hurdles with my engineers, ensuring that I understand what might be affecting their job satisfaction and productivity. In addition to these personal check-ins, I utilize anonymous connection scores, gathered daily from everyone on the team, to gain deeper insights into organizational health over several dimensions of team dynamics (inclusion, job satisfaction, manager effectiveness, manager’s technical skills, team’s adherence to company culture, etc.). This is especially useful to understand team morale and potential issues that may not surface in direct conversations. Another layer of feedback from XF partners offers an external view of the team’s culture, performance, and interpersonal dynamics. This combination of personal, anonymous, and XF feedback puts together a 360 view and helps identify patterns or underlying issues such as cultural gaps, lack of growth opportunities, poor work-life balance, or inter- and intra-team dynamics, allowing allowing for a proactive approach to morale management.

  • Direct communication with all levels of the org: Beyond relying solely on data, I place significant emphasis on engaging with employees at all levels, especially ICs who are often closest to the core operations. Speaking with both leaders and individual contributors offers valuable qualitative insights into potential issues that might not always surface through surveys. This ensures a holistic understanding of morale and fosters a culture of openness and trust across the org.

  • Moving quickly on giving hard feedback to avoid issues festering: Lastly, when hard feedback is needed, I believe in moving quickly to deliver it to the relevant people. Timely, direct communication helps prevent small problems from growing into larger organizational issues. This approach ensures that concerns are addressed in real time, reducing the chance for negative feelings to linger or worsen, and fosters a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.

  • Situation:
    • Monitoring Team Dynamics Through Feedback: In my current role managing a team of managers at AWS, I’m responsible for monitoring organizational health through a variety of feedback mechanisms, ensuring continuous awareness of team dynamics and performance.
    • Proactive 1:1s to Identify Challenges: Through regular 1:1s with my direct reports, I proactively collect feedback on team dynamics, discussing individual challenges and obstacles. In one specific sub-team, led by a new manager, this feedback revealed a decline in job satisfaction and productivity.
    • Anonymous Feedback for Deeper Insights: We also gather anonymous connection scores to assess several dimensions of team dynamics, such as inclusion, satisfaction, manager effectiveness, technical skills, and adherence to company culture. These scores indicated a drop in morale and manager effectiveness that hadn’t surfaced in direct conversations.
    • XF Feedback Frustration: Feedback from XF partners highlighted frustrations with delayed deliverables, despite the manager agreeing to timelines and scope.
    • Early Signs of Declining Team Morale from 360 Feedback: While this manager was excellent at setting technical direction and long-term strategy with clear strengths in these areas, the 360 feedback—personal, anonymous, and from XF partners—helped me identify that the manager was struggling to prioritize, which led to an overwhelmed team and unmet expectations with external partners.
  • Task:
    • Teaching Prioritization Skills: My responsibility here was to help the manager develop better prioritization skills to manage workload effectively.
    • Improving Cross-Functional Communication: I also needed to assist the manager in enhancing communication with cross-functional partners, ensuring clearer alignment on project expectations and delivery timelines.
  • Action:
    1. Coaching on Prioritization Using the RICE Framework: I introduced the RICE framework (Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort) to help the manager evaluate and prioritize projects more systematically. This method allowed the manager to quantify the business impact, assess the team’s capacity, and align the workload with the company’s objectives.
    2. Categorizing and Filtering Projects: Using the RICE framework, we reviewed the manager’s existing commitments and categorized them based on their score, identifying which projects to prioritize and which to renegotiate, postpone, or decline.
    3. Setting Boundaries with Cross-Functional Teams: I coached the manager on how to set clear boundaries with XF partners, politely pushing back on low-priority projects that exceeded the team’s capacity, while maintaining strong relationships.
    4. Facilitating Realignment with Stakeholders: I assisted the manager in realigning with cross-functional stakeholders by communicating the team’s bandwidth and refocusing on delivering high-priority work, ensuring all parties were on the same page.
    5. Timely Feedback for Continuous Improvement: I provided regular and direct feedback to the manager, reinforcing the importance of early issue detection and making adjustments proactively to avoid future problems.
  • Result:
    • Improved Prioritization and Team Focus: The manager became more effective at prioritizing tasks, using the RICE framework to make better decisions on where to allocate resources.
    • Better Cross-Functional Relationships: Clearer communication with XF partners led to realistic timelines and a stronger sense of collaboration, resulting in improved deliverables and reduced friction.
    • Enhanced Team Morale and Productivity: With clearer priorities and more structured delegation, team morale improved, and productivity increased, as the team was no longer overwhelmed by conflicting demands.
    • Better Manager Effectiveness: A positive shift was seen in their anonymous feedback scores, with a particular increase in manager effectiveness ratings as they grew more confident in managing workload and cross-functional requests.
  • Reflection:
    • Importance of Proactive Feedback: This experience reinforced the importance of coaching and targeted development, while still identifying and playing to people’s strengths.
    • Significance of Coaching on Prioritization: By proactively seeking feedback and coaching the manager on prioritization and communication, I helped this manager become more effective by improving both team dynamics and external relationships and grow into a confident and effective leader.

(M2) Can you tell me about a time you had a manager who was underperforming?

  • I have monthly skip level meetinggs
  • more with newer folks
  • all said he was accidentallly micromanaging
  • hellped him find his managerial style while striking a balanvce in the technical aspect
  • did this via BPM

  • SHADOWING

  • Typical problems stem from someone who has been recently moved into management and shouldn’t have been, a legacy bad manager they inherited, a good manager going through a rough patch for various reasons, incorrect assessment of the problem (manager is fine, something else is broken) etc. Separating concerns and then having an example of how to deal with it is key.
  • Good:
    • Generally: Pattern matching into frameworks that allow the candidate to scale
    • Specifically: Doing 360 feedback to identify and understand what’s going on; Moving quickly on giving hard feedback; Making situational adjustments.

What do you look for when hiring ICs?

  • Here are some key considerations I look for when hiring Individual Contributors (ICs):
    • Technical competence: This is a fundamental requirement, especially for technical roles, and serves as a critical gating factor.
    • Passion/excitement for the role and the company: While enthusiasm may not always be readily apparent, particularly among individuals with more reserved personalities or due to their cultural backgrounds, thoughtful responses during the interview process could be an indicator of genuine interest and commitment to the position.
    • Communication style: Whether the candidate communicates in a structured or unstructured manner is an important consideration.
    • Ability to work cross-functionally: Evaluate the candidate’s ability to collaborate effectively with other teams and stakeholders, ensuring they can navigate dependencies and contribute to broader organizational goals.
    • Cultural alignment: Assess whether the candidate would fit within the team’s culture, including factors such as a focus on delivery and an openness to bidirectional feedback.

How do you determine in an interview that the candidate possesses those desired qualities?

  • Technical expertise is typically the most straightforward to assess, as it is based on objective criteria such as technical tests, coding exercises, or specific problem-solving tasks. The candidate’s ability to demonstrate relevant skills and effectively apply them to practical scenarios provides a clear indication of their technical competence.

  • Enthusiasm for the role and the company, while somewhat subjective, can often be discerned by observing the candidate’s engagement during the conversation and their understanding of the company’s mission and values. Even candidates with more reserved personalities or from different cultural backgrounds may still demonstrate enthusiasm through thoughtful responses and a genuine interest in the company’s long-term goals.

  • Communication skills can be evaluated through the candidate’s ability to articulate their thoughts clearly and concisely. This includes whether they can explain complex ideas in a structured manner, respond to questions in a coherent way, and adapt their communication style based on the flow of the conversation or the needs of the audience.

  • Ability to work cross-functionally can be assessed by asking the candidate about their experiences collaborating with other teams or departments. Evaluate how they navigate dependencies, communicate across different functions, and align their work with broader organizational goals. Additionally, assess whether they demonstrate a team-player mindset by discussing how they contribute to shared goals, support colleagues, and foster collaboration across teams. Their ability to describe how they’ve worked with diverse teams and contributed to cross-functional projects is a strong indicator of their potential to succeed in this area.

  • Cultural fit is often assessed by exploring the candidate’s alignment with the team’s values and working style. Questions about past experiences, such as how they handle feedback or collaborate within a team, provides insights into their ability to thrive in a collaborative, feedback-driven environment. Additionally, discussing prior situations where they demonstrated teamwork and successfully managed project delivery helps gauge whether their work ethic and interpersonal approach align with the company’s culture.

(M2) What do you look for when hiring managers?

  • When hiring a manager, it is important to understand their motivation and observe for specific signals corresponding to core qualities such as:

    • Strong communication skills: the ability to adapt a message based on the audience, specifically their level of technical depth (technical/less-technical/non-technical) and metrics of success.
    • Empathy: understand and relate to the needs, concerns, and motivations of their team, fostering trust and engagement.
    • Being effective through others: empowering team members by unblocking them, supporting their growth, and facilitating connections with other teams to drive success.
    • Ability to drive cross-functional projects: effectively collaborating with various teams and departments to align on goals, manage dependencies, and drive initiatives forward across different functions and expertise levels by establishing consensus.
    • Aligning employees with suitable opportunities: matching their strengths, interests, and career goals with tasks and roles that maximize their growth and impact on the organization.
  • A manager should possess a comprehensive understanding of both the broader, high-level vision and the intricate, low-level details, with the ability to shift focus depending on the audience.
  • It is also important to evaluate whether the candidate exhibits strong leadership qualities with an inclination for people management. Not all leaders pursue the same path; some may lean more toward technical leadership, while others excel at managing teams and driving organizational outcomes.
  • If the candidate aligns with these expectations, I implement a three-month manager onboarding plan to assess their capabilities. This plan includes supervising a few direct reports and evaluating key areas such as goal and direction setting, effective communication, talent acquisition, and driving results through their team. This process ensures a smooth and meaningful transition into their managerial role.

How do you determine in an interview that the candidate possesses those desired qualities?

  • By probing into past experiences and understanding a candidate’s management style and philosophy, you can determine whether the candidate possesses the qualities necessary for effective management.

  • Communication skills can be assessed by how well the candidate adapts their communication to different audiences – both technical and non-technical – during the interview. Look for their ability to explain complex topics clearly and adjust their depth based on the technical understanding of the interviewer. Evaluate if they can convey their points succinctly and persuasively while demonstrating active listening.

  • Empathy can be observed through questions that explore how they support their team members and approach difficult conversations. Ask about situations where they had to balance team needs with organizational goals, and assess how they understand and address the concerns of their team, especially during challenging times.

  • Being effective through others can be evaluated by asking the candidate to describe how they’ve empowered their team to achieve results. Look for examples where they unblocked team members, mapped them to growth opportunities, or facilitated cross-team collaboration, demonstrating their ability to lead indirectly through their team’s success.

  • Ability to drive cross-functional projects can be assessed by asking the candidate to describe specific projects they’ve led that required collaboration across multiple teams or departments. Evaluate how they handled dependencies, aligned goals, and established consensus among stakeholders, as well as their ability to balance conflicting priorities to drive the project to success.

  • Aligning employees with suitable opportunities can be gauged by asking about their approach to career development. Inquire how they’ve matched team members’ strengths and aspirations with the right tasks and roles, ensuring both personal growth and impact on the organization. Look for evidence that they take an active role in identifying and nurturing talent within their teams.

How do you deal with attrition?

  • Understand Root Causes via Personal and Anonymous feedback: The first step in dealing with attrition is to analyze the root causes by gathering direct feedback through exit interviews and proactively collecting feedback from current employees. I connect with my team via regular 1:1s where I discuss individual challenges and hurdles with my engineers, ensuring that I understand what might be affecting their job satisfaction and productivity. In addition to these personal check-ins, I utilize anonymous connection scores, gathered daily from everyone on the team, to gain deeper insights into organizational health over several dimensions of team dynamics (inclusion, job satisfaction, manager effectiveness, manager’s technical skills, team’s adherence to company culture, etc.). This is especially useful to understand team morale and potential issues that may not surface in direct conversations. Another layer of feedback from XF partners offers an external view of the team’s culture, performance, and interpersonal dynamics. This combination of personal, anonymous, and XF feedback puts together a 360 view and helps identify patterns or underlying issues such as cultural gaps, lack of growth opportunities, poor work-life balance, or inter- and intra-team dynamics, allowing allowing for a proactive approach to morale management.

  • Fostering a Culture of Openness: I focus on fostering a culture where every team member feels heard and valued. This starts with open communication channels, such as regular team meetings and anonymous feedback, which allow employees to share their thoughts and concerns freely. I also encourage team members to take ownership of projects and recognize their contributions publicly, which fosters a sense of accomplishment and belonging. To further boost engagement, I initiate team-building activities and opportunities for XF collaboration, so employees feel invested not only in their work but in the broader success of the organization. This is all based on the idea that engaged employees are more likely to stay with the company because they see their work as meaningful and appreciated.

  • Career Growth Opportunities: I use 1:1s for regular check-ins to discuss individual goals, challenges, and areas for development. These ongoing conversations provide a platform for me to offer real-time feedback and support, ensuring that employees feel empowered and guided in their roles. Additionally, I conduct quarterly career growth conversations to focus on long-term career aspirations, skill development, and potential advancement opportunities within the organization. By aligning their personal career goals with the company’s objectives, I help employees visualize a clear path for growth, which increases motivation and retention.

  • Promote Work-Life Balance: I prioritize flexible work arrangements such as adjustable hours and remote options to accommodate personal needs. I encourage employees to set boundaries between work and personal time, respecting their time off and avoiding after-hours communication. I also ensure managers regularly assess workloads to prevent overload and load-balance accordingly, fostering a culture that values well-being over burnout. Ultimately, a balanced environment helps employees stay satisfied and reduces attrition.

  • Foster Team Relationships: Building strong team relationships and a sense of community is crucial to creating a supportive environment where employees thrive. I encourage collaboration through peer mentorship programs and XF projects, which help employees build trust and learn from each other. I also organize regular team-building events—both virtual and in-person—such as team fairs, offsites, hackathons, and lunches/dinners, where team members can connect outside of formal work settings. These activities foster camaraderie and a deeper connection within the team, making employees feel more integrated and valued. When employees feel a strong bond with their colleagues and a sense of community, they are less likely to leave, as they value the relationships they’ve built within the team.

  • Moving quickly on giving hard feedback to avoid issues festering: I ensure that constructive feedback is delivered promptly to address performance or morale issues before they escalate. This helps in resolving conflicts early, maintaining a healthy team dynamic, and demonstrating that concerns are taken seriously. Tackling problems head-on prevents them from becoming larger issues that could contribute to attrition.

  • Ultimately, the approach I use focuses on addressing both the causes of attrition and fostering an environment that encourages retention.

What are some strategies for closing senior candidates?

  • Highlighting the diversity and scope of projects: Senior candidates are often attracted to roles that allow them to make a significant impact and contribute to a variety of high-level initiatives. It is essential to emphasize the breadth of projects the team is currently pursuing, showcasing how these efforts align with the company’s strategic goals. Demonstrating the potential for diverse technical challenges and opportunities to work on innovative or transformative projects can be a powerful motivator.

  • Emphasizing the team’s proven impact: Sharing concrete examples of past successful launches and project outcomes can build trust and excitement. Senior candidates value joining teams that have a track record of delivering impactful results, so it is crucial to demonstrate the measurable influence that the team has already had within the company or industry.

  • Visibility and interaction with leadership: Senior candidates are often keen on roles where they will have direct exposure to and interaction with the company’s leadership. Highlighting how their role will involve presenting ideas to executives or contributing to high-level discussions will underscore the importance and visibility of their position within the org.

  • Opportunities for collaboration with senior technical leaders: Senior candidates highly value environments where they can engage in peer-level collaboration with other senior technical leaders. Emphasize the accessibility of the company’s top technical talent and describe how regular collaboration opportunities will foster a culture of learning, innovation, and shared expertise. This opportunity to influence strategic technical decisions is often a key factor in attracting and retaining senior talent.

How do you provide recognition and visibility to your team members?

  • Tailoring recognition to individual preferences: Recognition is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and it is critical to understand each team member on an individual level. Some employees may feel uncomfortable with public recognition, while others may thrive on being acknowledged in front of the entire org. Therefore, I use 1:1s with my team to do my due diligence and understand each person’s preferred style of recognition, allowing me to adapt my management approach to ensure that praise is both meaningful and motivating.

  • Utilizing diverse recognition channels: To ensure team members feel valued, I leverage various methods such as sending org-wide emails, utilizing internal kudos tools, or even offering personalized gestures of appreciation like gift cards with a note from the team. This variety allows me to provide recognition in a way that aligns with both the individual’s preferences and the broader team culture, ensuring that accomplishments are acknowledged in a manner that resonates with each recipient.

  • Personalized acknowledgment in 1:1s and team settings: Recognizing team members’ efforts during 1:1s and team meetings is another key strategy. This not only reinforces their contributions in a personal and direct manner but also provides a platform for highlighting achievements in a more intimate or collaborative setting, depending on what is most effective for the individual.

Can you give me an example of dealing with a conflict on your team?

Situation: Conflict Between Senior Staff Scientist and Junior Engineers on Training Expectations

  • New senior staff scientist with different expectations: In my current team at AWS, we recently hired a Senior Staff engineer and expected hands-on, daily guidance from the junior engineers to help him ramp up on Amazon’s complex systems and processes.
  • Junior engineers overloaded by requests: The junior team members, who had full workloads, found his expectations to be too time-consuming and preferred a more proactive style, where they answered specific questions rather than providing daily, in-depth training.
  • Growing frustration between both parties: This difference in expectations created frustration: the Senior Staff engineer felt unsupported, while the junior engineers felt overwhelmed.

Task: Address the Misalignment in Training Expectations and Prevent Impact on Team Dynamics

  • Recognizing the conflict and need for intervention: As the manager, I was responsible for resolving the growing tension between the Senior Staff engineer and junior engineers.
  • Ensuring improved team dynamics: Although not directly involved in the training, I had to step in to ensure that team dynamics improved and that both sides could collaborate effectively without any lingering frustration.

Action: Steps Taken to Understand and Resolve the Conflict

  1. Held individual conversations to understand perspectives:
    • I met with the Senior Staff engineer to understand his perspective, frustrations, and his need for more guidance.
    • I also had one-on-one meetings with the junior engineers to get their side of the issue, focusing on how this extra workload was affecting them.
  2. Bridged the gap in expectations with clear communication:
    • I explained to the Senior Staff engineer that at Amazon, a more self-directed approach is encouraged for senior staff, and that while help was available, daily hand-holding wasn’t typical.
    • I also reassured the junior engineers that I recognized their workload and that a more sustainable solution would be implemented.
  3. Created a balanced plan to address both needs:
    • I developed a compromise where the Senior Staff engineer was given specific documentation, resources, and training materials to help him learn independently.
    • The junior engineers would no longer be expected to provide constant, on-demand help but instead committed to scheduled Q&A sessions at designated times each week.
  4. Followed up regularly to ensure progress and adjust as needed:
    • I scheduled check-ins with the Senior Staff engineer to track his progress and ensure he was adapting to the new environment.
    • I also checked in with the junior engineers to confirm that their workload was manageable and that they felt the new system was working.

Result: Improved Collaboration and Balanced Support System

  • Senior engineer adapts to self-driven learning: The conflict was successfully resolved as the Senior Staff engineer adjusted to Amazon’s self-directed culture and made good progress with the independent resources provided.
  • Junior engineers appreciate structured support: The junior engineers appreciated the structured Q&A sessions, which allowed them to manage their workload more efficiently without feeling burdened by constant requests.
  • Better team collaboration and smoother onboarding: Overall, team collaboration improved, and the onboarding process for the Senior Staff engineer moved forward smoothly without further disruption.

Reflection: Importance of Balancing Team Expectations

  • Acknowledging and addressing differing expectations: This experience reinforced the importance of acknowledging and managing differing expectations in a team setting.
  • Effective leadership through clear communication and solutions: It highlighted the need for clear communication, proactive leadership, and finding middle-ground solutions that respect the needs of all parties involved to maintain team harmony and effectiveness.

What mechanisms do you use to detect any org-wide morale issues and how do you work through them?

  • Pulse on Org Health via Personal and Anonymous feedback: The first step to detect any org-wide morale issues is to proactively collect feedback from current employees or gather direct feedback through exit interviews in case of attrition. I connect with my team via regular 1:1s where I discuss individual challenges and hurdles with my engineers, ensuring that I understand what might be affecting their job satisfaction and productivity. In addition to these personal check-ins, I utilize anonymous connection scores, gathered daily from everyone on the team, to gain deeper insights into organizational health over several dimensions of team dynamics (inclusion, job satisfaction, manager effectiveness, manager’s technical skills, team’s adherence to company culture, etc.). This is especially useful to understand team morale and potential issues that may not surface in direct conversations. Another layer of feedback from XF partners helps put together a 360 view of the team’s culture, performance, and interpersonal dynamics. This combination of personal, anonymous, and XF feedback helps identify patterns or underlying issues such as cultural gaps, lack of growth opportunities, poor work-life balance, or inter- and intra-team dynamics, allowing me to address problems before they lead to attrition.

  • Comprehensive health checks through data analysis: The questionnaire results provide a detailed breakdown of various aspects of organizational health. By reviewing these metrics, I can identify which areas require attention, with a focus on those with the lowest scores. This data-driven approach ensures that efforts to improve morale are intentional/targeted and strategic, addressing the most pressing concerns first.

  • Acknowledging team success through data: It is also important to recognize and communicate positive results. For instance, I often share with others, “I wish my team members could convey this themselves, but we are in the 99th percentile for our satisfaction score in certain areas.” This kind of transparency helps reinforce morale by highlighting strengths and celebrating wins, which is crucial for maintaining high engagement.

  • Direct communication with all levels of the org: Beyond relying solely on data, I place significant emphasis on engaging with employees at all levels, especially ICs who are often closest to the core operations. Speaking with both leaders and individual contributors offers valuable qualitative insights into potential issues that might not always surface through surveys. This ensures a holistic understanding of morale and fosters a culture of openness and trust across the org.

  • Moving quickly on giving hard feedback to avoid issues festering: Addressing morale issues promptly is crucial. When hard feedback is needed, I believe in moving quickly to deliver it to the relevant people. Timely, direct communication helps prevent small problems from growing into larger organizational issues. This approach ensures that concerns are addressed in real time, reducing the chance for negative feelings to linger or worsen, and fosters a culture of accountability and continuous improvement.

What are two things you would like to change about your company’s culture?

  • Streamlining the meeting preparation process: Amazon’s culture requires that meetings begin with everyone reading a document during the meeting itself. This approach slows down decision-making and is often inefficient, especially since everyone has different reading speeds, leading to delays and inconsistencies in understanding. I believe this time could be better utilized if the document reading were done offline, prior to the meeting. This would allow participants to read at their own pace and come to the meeting fully prepared, enabling us to focus on discussion and decisions rather than consuming valuable meeting time with reading.

  • Enhancing meeting effectiveness by defining clear outcomes: To ensure meetings are purposeful and productive, I would like to see a shift towards starting every meeting with a clear statement of what success looks like for that particular session. For example, stating, “The goal of this meeting is to educate partners on XYZ,” allows us to work backward from this goal, ensuring that the meeting stays focused and aligned with its intended outcome. This approach would hold participants more accountable and help eliminate unnecessary meetings. If we could adopt this practice, it would significantly improve meeting efficiency and ensure that we consistently achieve our objectives with a focus on efficiency.

What was your biggest mistake as a people manager?

  • Lack of Upward Feedback: One of the significant mistakes I made as a people manager was failing to be proactive in providing upward feedback to my manager. To set context, my manager recently inherited our org of 80 people after my previous manager’s departure. The new manager was unfamiliar with our org structure and its business operations.

  • Manager’s New Approach: His approach to management and processes was considerably different from what the team had been accustomed to. He sought to revamp existing processes to align them with his vision (of increased operational efficiency), which, while well-intentioned, did not account for the specific nuances of how our team functioned.

  • Failure to Communicate Process Rationale: My mistake was in not effectively communicating to him the reasons behind our current processes, such as the fact that they had been tailored over time to address specific challenges unique to our team. For example, our bi-weekly project updates had been designed to balance in-depth status reporting with team autonomy, ensuring that team members could focus on execution without excessive oversight. Additionally, we had streamlined our approval processes to reduce bottlenecks, allowing for quicker decision-making during critical project phases. This change was implemented after a previous project experienced a two-week delay due to multiple layers of sign-offs, which hindered our ability to meet a key deadline. By streamlining approvals, we avoided similar delays in subsequent projects and enabled the team to move swiftly during critical phases. These workflows had already proven to optimize collaboration and productivity, as evidenced by our team’s successful delivery of multiple past projects over the past year. I should have shared these examples and explained that sudden changes—like introducing additional review layers or more frequent status meetings—would likely disrupt our momentum, delay decision-making, and diminish the team’s sense of ownership.

  • Disruption and Team Impact: While my manager had the right intent, his changes disrupted the team’s workflow as evidenced by feedback from both personal 1:1 discussions and anonymous polling of daily connection scores, which revealed growing frustration over challenges in meeting project deadlines due to the increased focus on status reporting. This led to increased friction, lowered morale, and a sense of frustration among the team, outcomes that could have been mitigated had I taken responsibility for offering constructive feedback early on.

  • Lessons in Advocacy: From this experience, I have learned the importance of being proactive in providing upward feedback, especially when changes could significantly impact team dynamics. I’ve come to the realization that it is my responsibility to advocate for my team’s needs and ensure that leadership is fully informed about how decisions may affect the team’s overall productivity and well-being.

Take two

  • Took on additional work accidentally
  • other teams in Amazon have a pipeline to productionize
  • This particular team had its own specific pipeline, very unique due to data governance/ data privacy laws they had to follow as this was very sensitive data
  • Could take longer than development

What would your reports say you can improve?

  • Fostering a sense of camaraderie: Over the past 5 years, I’ve built closely knit teams at Apple and Alexa, but when I transitioned to AWS, I faced a new challenge of managing a fully remote team distributed across two continents for the first time.

  • Value of Camaraderie: As a manager, the importance of camaraderie and cohesion in building strong interpersonal relationships within the team was clear to me, so I used to schedule regular virtual coffee chats and team-building activities like game days to create informal touch-points for the team.

  • Difficulty in Fostering Camaraderie: However, with a fully remote team, fostering a sense of camaraderie and connection requires intentional effort beyond virtual touch-points. Many team members have expressed that they miss the sense of camaraderie that comes with working in a physical office environment.

  • Recent focus on improving camaraderie: In recent months, I have made an intentional/concerted effort to address this issue. For example, I have hosted in-person team on-sites (inviting some key XF partners as well), team lunches and dinners, a team fair, where we could demo our work, engage with XF partners, and celebrate our achievements together. This is a step in the right direction, but I recognize that maintaining and enhancing team cohesion in a remote setting requires ongoing attention and effort.

(M2) Is this person effective at working through other managers?

  1. Set Clear Strategic Direction:
    • Organizational Alignment: I ensure alignment with broader organizational goals by reinforcing the company’s mission and how each department contributes to our overall success.
    • Strategic Vision and Priorities: I work with each manager to ensure they understand the strategic vision and clearly communicate priorities, so they know how their teams contribute and can focus on what matters most.
  2. Empower Managers to Lead:
    • Autonomy and Accountability: I give managers the autonomy to make decisions while holding them accountable for outcomes, fostering confidence and ownership.
    • Leadership Development: I provide guidance when needed but give managers the space to lead independently, allowing them to grow through their decisions and challenges.
  3. Focus on Coaching and Development:
    • Managerial Coaching: I regularly coach managers on leadership challenges like prioritization, team dynamics, conflict resolution, and fostering the right culture.
    • Tools and Role Growth: I provide frameworks for improving decision-making and ensure managers grow in their roles by offering developmental support and mentorship opportunities.
  4. Maintain Strong Communication Channels:
    • 1:1 Meetings and Open-Door Policy: I set up regular 1:1 meetings to discuss progress, roadblocks, and feedback, while maintaining an open-door policy for managers to bring up challenges early.
    • Cross-Team Collaboration: I promote cross-team communication to foster collaboration and break down silos.
  5. Create Accountability and Ownership:
    • Performance Metrics and Accountability: I establish clear performance metrics and milestones, holding managers accountable for results and following up on progress to ensure alignment with goals.
    • Empowerment and Ownership: I balance empowerment with accountability, ensuring managers take ownership of their results while maintaining flexibility to innovate.
  6. Provide Timely Feedback and Guidance:
    • Constructive Feedback: I give timely, actionable feedback when performance gaps arise, helping managers make immediate improvements and prevent recurring issues.

(M2) How do you help your line managers to work smoothly with each other?

  • Identify collaboration opportunities across line managers – tag-team managers with similar interests with each other and map opportunities to a group of people as you engage with your XFN.
  • Cross-pollination of findings via meetings to avoid stepping on each other’s toes and/or reinventing the wheel.
  1. Identify Collaboration Opportunities:
    • I actively look for areas where managers can collaborate based on shared goals or overlapping responsibilities. I tag-team managers with similar interests or complementary projects to encourage collaboration and mutual support. This allows them to work together on initiatives that benefit from multiple perspectives and expertise.
    • When engaging with cross-functional teams (XFN), I identify opportunities that can be mapped to a group of managers, ensuring that collaborative efforts are organized and everyone is aligned. <!–
  2. Facilitate Cross-Pollination of Ideas:
    • I set up regular meetings or syncs where managers can share their insights, best practices, and lessons learned. This cross-pollination of findings helps managers avoid stepping on each other’s toes, duplicating efforts, or reinventing the wheel. By encouraging open communication, they learn from one another, streamline processes, and innovate together.
  3. Establish Clear Communication Channels:
    • I create dedicated channels for managers to communicate freely, discuss roadblocks, and seek advice from peers. This promotes transparency and ensures that any potential issues are addressed early. I also encourage managers to have cross-team check-ins to align their teams’ goals and strategies to prevent conflicts or misalignments. –>
  4. Facilitate Cross-Pollination and Open Communication:
    • I facilitate cross-pollination and open communication among managers by setting up regular meetings or syncs where they can share insights, best practices, and lessons learned. These sessions allow managers to freely discuss roadblocks, seek advice from peers, and address potential issues early. By promoting transparency, I ensure that managers avoid duplicating efforts, stepping on each other’s toes, or reinventing the wheel. Through this open communication, managers learn from one another, streamline processes, and collaborate to drive innovation.
  5. Clarify Roles and Responsibilities:
    • While this might be obvious, ensuring managers have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities is essential to avoid overlap or confusion. I work with each manager to define their team’s scope of work, making sure they understand how their team’s objectives fit into the broader organization. This clarity reduces friction and allows managers to focus on their specific areas while collaborating effectively with others.

(M2) In conflict scenarios or when one of your managers is making a mistake, how do you decide whether to step in or observe from the background and provide coaching?

  1. Assess the Severity of the Mistake:
    • My first step is to assess the severity of the mistake and the potential impact on the team or the broader organization. Not all mistakes are equal; some may have a larger, more lasting impact, while others can be learning opportunities.
    • If the mistake is minor and won’t have significant long-term consequences, I often observe from the background to give the manager the chance to correct the issue themselves.
  2. Determine if It’s a One-Way or Two-Way Door Decision:
    • I use the one-way versus two-way door framework to evaluate the decision. If the mistake involves a one-way door—meaning it’s a high-impact, irreversible decision—I will step in quickly to mitigate potential damage.
    • For two-way door decisions, where the mistake can be reversed or corrected without major repercussions, I prefer to let the manager handle the situation themselves. This allows them to learn and grow from the experience.
  3. Step In for Critical Situations:
    • In cases where the mistake could lead to catastrophic results—such as severe impacts on team morale, project delivery, or stakeholder trust—I will step in immediately to provide direction. In these instances, timely intervention is crucial to avoid long-term harm, and I’ll work closely with the manager to resolve the issue.
  4. Prioritize Coaching and Development for Non-Critical Mistakes:
    • For non-critical mistakes, I take a coaching approach. Rather than giving them the solution, I use the opportunity to teach them how to fish—helping them understand the root cause

Tell me about your current and/or greatest developmental area.

  • Gap between E6 and E7
  • One of my current developmental areas as an E6 manager at Amazon is being able to find opportunities to champion my team’s work within the org. Finding those opportunities to help foster growth and pitching the work to other teams in the org, helping them find solutions for problems they didn’t even know they had.

  • The way I recognized this growth opportunity is through my mentor. My mentor is an E7, almost E8, and being in meetings with her, I’ve seen her champion her team’s work across our org and throughout the company. For example, her team has created libraries for automating large-scale testing processes, which have been adopted by several teams across the company, improving efficiency and reducing manual testing efforts. Seeing her advocate for these solutions inspired me to recognize the potential impact of finding and pitching such opportunities myself.

  • Follow-up Prompts:

    1. What is the developmental area?

      • The developmental area is learning to actively find and promote opportunities to champion my team’s work within the broader org. Specifically, being able to recognize where our work can provide value to other teams and advocating for its adoption.

    2. How did you come to recognize this growth opportunity area?

      • I recognized this growth area through observing my mentor, who is an E7, and how she consistently promotes her team’s contributions across the org. By being part of meetings with her, I saw how effectively she positioned her team’s solutions, gaining recognition and wider adoption of their work. Her success made me realize that this is an area where I can grow to bridge the gap between my current level and the E7 level.

    3. What steps have you taken to improve in this area?

      • To improve in this area, I’ve taken several steps:
        • Building a clearer understanding of my team’s strengths and the value we can offer to other teams in the org.
        • I’ve started attending cross-team meetings more actively to identify pain points where our work could provide value.
        • I’ve worked on improving my storytelling and pitching skills so I can effectively communicate the impact of our work.
        • I’ve sought out feedback from my mentor on how to better champion my team and structure these opportunities.

    4. How have you made recent progress in this area?

    • Recently, I’ve made progress by identifying a gap in data synchronization between our team and another team working on customer analytics. I pitched a solution leveraging my team’s data integration expertise, which would allow for smoother data flow between both teams, improving the accuracy and timeliness of customer insights. This solution is now being implemented, and as a result, my team’s visibility and contributions are being recognized more broadly within the org.

    1. How do you believe improving in this area will impact you?

      • Improving in this area will have a significant impact on both my team and my career. It will help my team gain more recognition, leading to more collaboration and opportunities for growth. For me personally, it will allow me to develop into a stronger leader, with the skills to advocate for my team’s work at a higher organizational level. This will also position me to move from an E6 to an E7, as it demonstrates strategic influence and leadership within the company.

  • Developmental Area: While I have successfully advocated for my team’s contributions to parallel teams and XF partners, one of my current developmental areas is the ability to identify and promote opportunities to champion my team’s work across the broader org and other business units within the company. Specifically, focusing on identifying opportunities to cross-pollinate our work beyond the team and XF partners, finding areas where it can drive value across the org and proactively advocating for its adoption to increase our broader impact.

  • How I Recognized Growth Opportunity: I recognized this growth opportunity through my mentor, who is a director in a parallel org. Observing her in meetings, I saw how she consistently championed her team’s contributions across various teams and departments. A notable example was when her team developed libraries to automate large-scale distributed training, which were adopted company-wide, resulting in improved efficiency for training some of our large models. Witnessing her success inspired me to recognize the importance of proactively advocating for my team’s work.

  • Steps to Improve: To improve in this area, I have taken several proactive steps:
    • Developed clear understanding of my team’s strengths and the potential value we can offer to other teams.
    • Invested intentional effort in building relationships by identifying key stakeholders across the org, understanding their roadmap at a high level, attending cross-org meetings, and in some cases, proactively reaching out to my cross-org peers to find opportunities to collaborate.
    • Improved pitching skills to better communicate our work’s impact.
    • Sought feedback from my mentor to learn how to more effectively champion my team and identify opportunities.
    • Proactively explored opportunities within broader organizational initiatives, looking for ways to align my team’s work with larger strategic goals.

  • Recent Progress Made: Recently, my team led an initiative building infrastructure for data pre-processing, fine-tuning, and offline evaluation for LLMs, which has significantly elevated our team’s visibility. To ensure broader organizational impact, I proactively championed this initiative across multiple cross-org forums, including weekly leadership syncs, XF technical deep dives, and internal AI working groups. During these sessions, I presented the potential benefits of our infrastructure, such as how it streamlines the model development lifecycle and improves task performance in various NLP applications. I also facilitated knowledge-sharing workshops to demonstrate the use of our tools and frameworks, addressing specific needs of teams in different departments. As a result of these efforts, our infrastructure has been adopted by several teams across the organization, driving efficiency in their workflows. The success of this initiative has led to wider cross-org adoption of our tools and frameworks, positioning our team as a key contributor to foundational AI capabilities and significantly increasing our influence across the company.

  • Impact on Team and Career: Reflecting upon this gap with self-awareness, I realize that improving in this area will have a significant impact on both my team as well as my personal growth. By successfully advocating for my team’s work, we will gain more recognition and opportunities for collaboration within the org, leading to potential growth. On a personal level, this will allow me to develop into a more strategic leader, with the ability to influence at a higher organizational level. Lastly, with a passion for continued growth, I am committed to refining my ability to advocate for my team’s contributions and expanding our influence across the organization to drive greater impact.

  1. What is the developmental area?
    The developmental area is actively identifying and promoting opportunities to champion my team’s work within the org and advocating for its broader adoption.

  2. How did you come to recognize this growth opportunity area?
    I recognized this opportunity through observing my mentor, an E7, who consistently champions her team’s contributions and drives adoption of their work across the org.

  3. What steps have you taken to improve in this area?
    I have focused on understanding my team’s strengths, attending cross-team meetings to identify opportunities, enhancing my storytelling and pitching skills, and seeking feedback from my mentor on how to advocate effectively.

  4. How have you made recent progress in this area?
    I recently identified a data synchronization issue between teams and pitched a solution leveraging my team’s expertise. This solution is now being implemented, which has increased my team’s visibility and impact.

  5. How do you believe improving in this area will impact you?
    Improving in this area will help my team gain recognition and collaboration opportunities, while positioning me for career advancement to E7 by demonstrating strategic leadership and influence at a higher organizational level.

Additional Questions

How do you assess priorities? How do you then assign them?

  • Assessing priorities:
    • Priorities must connect with the project milestones, which in turn, must strategically align with OKRs established at the beginning of the quarter, serving as our guiding principle or “north star.”
    • Priorities are categorized on a scale from P0 to P3, where P0 represents a critical issue (showstopper), P1 indicates an expected outcome, P2 denotes an important task, and P3 applies to tasks that are good to have (i.e., beneficial but not critical).
  • Assigning them:
    • I prefer to engage team members involved in the respective projects during the planning phase, enabling a mutual decision-making process regarding priorities. My approach to assigning task priorities—and, more broadly, managing the day-to-day operations of the team—hinges on the idea that the level of autonomy granted to an employee matches (i.e., is directly proportional) to their skillset and competency. For instance, senior engineers can set their own priorities, whereas junior engineers may require closer guidance. This flexibility fosters trust and leadership development within the team, rather than a follower mentality (i.e., we are building leaders not soldiers). However, for critical projects or when strict delivery timelines are approaching, I like to stay connected to the low-level details of the work.
  • Reiterate priorities during weekly team meetings or daily stand-ups to ensure alignment and focus.

How do you delegate responsibility for an assignment? Who do you choose? What and how do you delegate?

  • My approach to delegating tasks involves (i) assessing the competency and proficiency of employees across the required skills, (ii) considering their individual interests and career development goals, and (iii) evaluating compatibility (i.e., how well they would collaborate) with other potential task assignees.
  • Delegating responsibility thus requires figuring out the best intersection in the Venn diagram of these three areas—where business needs, employee interests, and skill sets overlap, along with the compatibility of team members working together on the task.

What have you found to be the best way to monitor the performance of your work and/or the work of others? / Talk about your planning (OKRs) + tracking (Sprint) process.

  • Let me first set context by talking about the process I use to set priority and can then touch upon how I track priorities.
  • To set priorities, I prefer to engage team members involved in the respective projects during the planning phase, enabling a mutual decision-making process regarding priorities. My approach to assigning task priorities—and, more broadly, managing the day-to-day operations of the team—hinges on the idea that the level of autonomy granted to an employee matches (i.e., is directly proportional) to their skillset and competency. For instance, senior engineers can set their own priorities, whereas junior engineers may require closer guidance. This flexibility fosters trust and leadership development within the team, rather than a follower mentality (i.e., we are building leaders not soldiers). However, for critical projects or when strict delivery timelines are approaching, I like to stay connected to the low-level details of the work.
  • To track priorities, I establish intermediate checkpoints to evaluate progress and ensure projects stay aligned with their objectives, utilizing a hybrid process that combines Agile project management within a Scrum or Kanban framework for day-to-day tracking, while incorporating OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) for strategic alignment and long-term planning.
    • Summary:
      • As a quick summary, the idea is to break down user stories into tasks with clear acceptance criteria and track them during sprint planning and review meetings. Multiple sprints aligned with a milestone are monitored via milestone or project review meetings, which serve as broader checkpoints. Lastly, ensure milestones are aligned with OKRs for strategic, long-term business alignment.
    • Break down user stories into tasks or subtasks with clear acceptance criteria/outcomes to ensure measurable, successful completion. These tasks are tracked during sprint planning and review meetings, where I discuss, estimate, and assign them to upcoming sprints.
    • Track multiple sprints aligned with key milestones during milestone or project review meetings. Milestones serve as higher-level checkpoints, typically spanning multiple sprints, and I track them to measure progress at a broader level.
    • Align milestones with OKRs, which serve as high-level goals with measurable outcomes, tracked quarterly (or annually) to ensure overall strategic alignment. Milestones are more operational, while OKRs encompass broader, long-term objectives that may include multiple milestones or projects.
  • I like to collaborate closely with PMs (program managers) during sprint planning to define goals, estimate workloads, and ensure that user stories and their constituent tasks are on track for timely completion.

Tell me about a time when you didn’t have all of the desired information to solve a tech problem and how it was resolved? / Tell me about a time when you needed to act quickly on something but did not have a clear idea on how to best proceed.

  • Story 1:
    • Situation:
      • Complexity of model management: In my prior role at Amazon Alexa, I oversaw the process for launching new models for Alexa, which involved rigorous online A/B testing after offline evaluations.
      • High-priority issue raised: A few months ago, we received an urgent ticket from our VP regarding an Alexa device misrecognizing him as his son, offering personalized recommendations meant for his son. In a matter of weeks, we received a couple of more tickets with similar reported issues.
      • Widespread customer impact: Considering the internal escalation as well as the widespread customer impact of this issue, this was elevated to a high-priority case which required immediate action.
    • Task:
      • Balancing speed and accuracy: My task was to resolve the issue quickly, without following the comprehensive two-month validation process that we follow for model roll-outs, but still ensuring no other performance regressions.
      • Unclear path forward: However, since there wasn’t a clear plan or process for resolving this unique issue, adding to the complexity of decision-making.
    • Action:
      • Immediate leadership response: I took initiative, rallied the team, and kicked off a brainstorming session to generate potential solutions and approaches.
      • Collaboration and daily syncs: To maintain momentum and align efforts, I worked closely with the PM to initiate set up daily stand-ups, ensuring that everyone stayed focused on driving the issue to closure.
      • Data-driven diagnosis: We mined relevant utterances from the Alexa database, pinpointing the issue which was that the model was not exposed to utterances combinations of background noises such as a kitchen range turned on along with road noise.
      • Creative solution under tight constraints: Partnering with the Alexa recording studio, we quickly gathered new utterances and had them annotated with the help of our annotation teams. However, we were under significant time pressure and didn’t have the luxury of waiting for the usual two-month validation cycle. With incomplete data and limited time for validation, we had to make swift decisions, relying on our domain knowledge and intuition to move forward, knowing that waiting for full validation would delay resolving the issue and negatively impact other customers. Despite the risks, it was critical to ensure the model fix was implemented as soon as possible.
      • Streamlined testing strategy: I devised a streamlined evaluation process, using a small, representative dataset for proxy metrics. This allowed us to test for regressions quickly.
      • Judgment-based decision-making: Given the wider error bars in confidence intervals, we used our best judgment to move forward while ensuring we minimized risks.
      • Controlled rollout: We cautiously rolled out the updated model to a small proportion of customers, setting up real-time monitoring to track performance in the field and thus mitigate risks.
    • Result:
      • Quick resolution: The team successfully fixed the misrecognition issue in a timely manner, addressing the VP’s concerns and improving customer experience.
      • Global rollout after stability: Once the fix was confirmed stable, we rolled out the model update to all customers worldwide.
      • Long-term prevention: To avoid similar issues, I initiated a dedicated project to revise our evaluation data distribution, using augmentation techniques to improve coverage for future scenarios.
    • Reflection:
      • Embracing ambiguity and uncertainty: In retrospect/hindsight, this experience taught me the importance of embracing ambiguity and making swift, informed decisions, especially when time is of the essence.
      • Balancing speed with accuracy when critical: The ability to rely on intuition and experience while balancing speed and accuracy is crucial for success in these scenarios.
  • Story 2:
    • Speaker recognition
    • Created a new child speaker identification
    • I’m not a trained speech scientist
    • I like to fine the SME’s in the company, lean on them
    • Understand the technical feasability
    • At the end of the day, all modalities use ML models so I’m able to abstract away and understand in my language
    • Took a vague problem, found resources to help me translate it to technical tasks and find out its feasability
    • We delivered it

Tell me about a time that you had to explain a technical concept to a non-technical audience. / Describe a time when you had to modify your communication style or approach to interact effectively with others from a different background.

  • Story 1:
    • Situation:
      • Rufus Conversational Shopping Chatbot Project: One of the flagship projects my team at Amazon worked on was Rufus, a conversational shopping chatbot powered by LLMs, designed to enhance the customer experience. Rufus aimed to help users interactively shop using voice or text by answering product-related questions based on customer reviews, which was critical for improving customer engagement and driving customer growth—a key business objective.
      • Need for RAG Pipeline: To handle diverse customer inquiries about specific products effectively, we needed to deploy Rufus with a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipeline to pull relevant data from product reviews and provide accurate, context-rich responses.
    • Task:
      • Explain the Need for RAG: When engaging with non-technical teams such as marketing and finance, my task was to explain why building a RAG pipeline was essential for Rufus to answer product-related questions based on customer reviews. Getting buy-in from them was essential because they influenced the resources and prioritization needed to move forward with the RAG implementation.
    • Action:
      1. Focusing on the Big Picture Impact with Non-Technical Teams: When working with non-technical teams, I like to focus on the big-picture impact—how this change would drive overall product success, improve key metrics, and ensure customer satisfaction. Specifically, I framed the conversation around how customer experience and engagement would improve by providing more accurate, relevant product information through RAG, ultimately driving sales and repeat purchases.
      2. Using the AIM Framework: To ensure effective communication with the non-technical audience, I employed the AIM framework (Audience, Intent, Message). By tailoring my explanation to the specific needs of the marketing and finance teams (Audience), my Intent was to convey the business relevance of implementing the RAG pipeline, and I crafted my Message focused on the big-picture impact—how this change would drive overall product success, improve key metrics,to emphasize how it would enhance customer satisfaction, sales, and conversion rates, using clear, relatable terms to align with their interests.
      3. Simplifying the Concept of RAG: I explained that RAG allows Rufus to “search through product reviews in real time” and incorporate that information into its responses, acting like a “smart assistant” that uses real customer feedback to improve accuracy. Without RAG, Rufus would rely on outdated or generic information, but with RAG, it could dynamically retrieve the latest reviews, providing personalized and accurate responses that would enhance the shopping experience.
      4. Linking to Business Outcomes and Metrics: Since their primary concerns were response accuracy, latency, and ensuring Rufus’s long-term success, I highlighted how RAG would result in quicker, more accurate responses, leading to a projected 15% increase in customer satisfaction and a 10% boost in conversion rates and the ability to scale easily with the growing number of reviews, keeping responses up-to-date without requiring manual updates.
    • Result:
      • Stakeholder Support: The team fully supported the RAG pipeline, understanding how it would improve our key business metrics of response accuracy and customer satisfaction.
      • Improved Performance: After launch, Rufus saw an increase in customer satisfaction and conversion inline with our expectations.
    • Reflection:
      • Framing Technical Solutions as Business Outcomes: In retrospect, this experience reinforced the importance of explaining technical changes in terms of business impact, tailoring the message using tools like the AIM framework, and focusing on the metrics that matter to non-technical stakeholders.

  • Story 2:

    • AIM framework.
    • Intern vs Director vs Customer.
    • Project was our first launch in the GenAI org.

    • Australian Open multi-modal AI tennis umpire.

    • Situation:
      • Developing a Multi-Modal AI Umpire for the Australian Open: I was working on a high-profile project in our GenAI org: developing a multi-modal AI umpire for the Australian Open. This system leveraged both vision and language models to make real-time decisions on tennis matches, such as line calls and scorekeeping.
      • Diverse Stakeholders: The project involved collaborating with a diverse group of stakeholders, from junior engineers and interns to senior directors and external customers, each with different levels of expertise and communication needs.
    • Task:
      • Ensuring Effective Communication and Collaboration: My task was to ensure effective communication and collaboration across this diverse group.
      • Adapting Communication for Different Audiences: I needed to adapt my communication style to accommodate interns who were learning the ropes, directors who needed high-level overviews and strategic insights, and external customers who were concerned with the practical applications and benefits of the AI umpire in enhancing the tennis tournament experience.
    • Action:
      • Using the AIM Framework: I used the AIM framework (Audience, Intent, Message) to tailor my communication.
        • For Interns: I broke down the complex vision and language models into manageable concepts and focused on teaching, making sure they understood both the technical details and their role in the project. I emphasized mentorship, offering guidance to help them grow within the project.
        • For Directors: I presented high-level overviews, focusing on strategic alignment and the broader impact of the AI umpire on Amazon’s GenAI strategy and partnerships. I omitted the granular technical details and instead concentrated on business metrics, such as market potential and the innovative edge the system would bring.
        • For Customers: When interacting with customers, I shifted my focus to outcomes. I explained how the AI umpire would enhance the Australian Open experience by increasing accuracy in line calls and providing real-time feedback. I translated technical jargon into user benefits, such as improved fairness in matches and better engagement for spectators.
    • Result:
      • Strong Buy-In and Alignment from Stakeholders: By modifying my communication style according to the audience, I was able to secure strong buy-in and alignment from all stakeholders.
      • Interns’ Effective Contributions: The interns felt supported and contributed effectively.
      • Directors’ Confidence in Strategic Direction: The directors were confident in the strategic direction.
      • Customer Excitement About Impact: The customers were excited about the potential impact of the AI umpire.
      • Successful Launch: This alignment was crucial to the successful launch of the multi-modal AI umpire at the Australian Open, which received widespread praise for its accuracy and innovation.
    • Reflection:
      • Tailoring Communication for Different Stakeholders: This experience highlighted the importance of tailoring communication to meet the needs of different stakeholders.
      • AIM Framework for Effective Communication: By using the AIM framework, I was able to ensure that everyone, regardless of their technical background or role, understood the project’s value and their part in its success.
      • Adaptability Key to Success: This adaptability was key to the project’s successful deployment and reception at a global event.

Recruiter - ppl management (Detail, Managing through managers, Reflection)

  • 1 People management. The Purpose of the people management interview is to assess your philosophy, process, and strategy around your management experience as well as how you communicate effectively to your team. ◦ During this interview you will be asked to tell a lot of stories about relevant experiences. Be prepared with a few stories highlighting your people management, coaching/mentorship, building a team, success hiring and firing, examples of managing strong performers and low performers (how did you help turn situations around).  ◦ Describe a work experience that you consider to be most interesting, challenging, and perhaps relevant to what you view as the opportunity at Facebook. ◦ Describe a situation where you worked XFly to remove a significant barrier for your team, or a situation in which you were able to really maximize the productivity of a team by digging into the inner workings and dynamics of the team.

  • People Leadership:
  • Team Structure:
    • How many people are on your team?
    • What is your team working on?
  • Performance Management:
    • Have you had to manage performance issues?
    • What is your process for performance management?
    • Have you managed through managers?
    • How do you manage through managers to ensure alignment and accountability?
    • How do you grow leaders within your team?
    • If someone didn’t meet expectations, what actions did you take to help them improve?
    • Have you had to hire or fire based on performance?
  • Philosophy on Promotions:
    • What is your philosophy on promotion?
    • How do you grow individuals who aren’t quite ready for promotion yet?
  • Team Retention and Culture:
  • Retention and Satisfaction:
    • How do you ensure team retention and satisfaction?
    • How do you keep the team motivated?
  • Team Building:
    • Have you organized offsite events for your team? How have you done them?
    • What are you focused on in growing and fostering a positive culture within your team?
  • Meetings and Feedback:
  • Team Meetings:
    • What is the structure of your team meetings?
    • How do you conduct 1:1 conversations?
  • Feedback:
    • How do you give feedback to your team members?
    • Do you ask for feedback from your reports?
  • Building Teams:
  • Team Structure and Reporting:
    • How are people structured in your team? Who reports up to you?
  • Recruitment:
    • Are you focused on technical performance, or do you balance technical skills with culture and other factors?
    • How do you partner with recruiting to build diversity within your team?

  • Your senior engineer doesn’t have enough context to make this decision? Talk about how you gave it to them.

  • Your mid-level engineer doesn’t have the skills yet. Do they have a mentor in that area?

Rubric - ppl management

  • Growing reports: different growth plans per level
  • What is your management type
  • How do you grow folks into leaders
  • Low performers
  • How to hire
  • how to change current culture
  • how to reward employees
  • biggest mistake