FAQs

Customer Behavior

Q: What is the most unexpected end-user’s or customer’s behavior you have seen?

When we were to launch our new platform in the US(migrating from the monolith), we selected a few customers to try our new platform at next.vistaprint.com with a $50 credit to purchase products and share their experiences. 🎉

These customers usually bought business cards or similar top-selling products for their professional needs. We were waiting to see how our pages perform, but we discovered that most of our products were from something other than the top-selling products we used to sell.

When we dug deeper, we discovered that these people were using the credits for gifting items as they had already met their professional needs.

Misleading Data Points

When Data Points Lied!

To release, we generally do A/B testing to validate if it would have a positive effect.

• Hypothesis: Too much data on a listing page drives the users out.
• Solution: Reduce data points that are not critical then. The first thing was to remove “Starting At Pricing” from the tiles.
• A/B Test Results: The User Interactivity increase! The click-through rate of the page increased
• Observations: The users were clicking to get to the details page, checking the price, and coming back.

So while the metrics said that the CTR had increased, the overall experience had decreased instead of improving.

Team Management

Q: What is your ideal team structure?

A total of 5 developers with following composition

• 1 Lead Software Engineer
• 2 Senior Software Engineer
• 2 Software Engineer

The Lead Software Engineer manages two pairs of dev, each pair have 1 Senior Software Engineer and 1 Software Engineer.

Conflict Management

The first step to resolving conflict is to listen for both sides. Personally, the conflicts that I have observed is because of one or more below reasons. After listing to both the parties, you would ideally break it down to reasons like below and fix them one by one. Remember that the goal is to limit the negative aspects of conflict while increasing the positive aspects of conflicts. You should not try to use your authority to suppress any conflicts, but instead try to mold that into a healthy discussion.

• Miscommunications
  • Bridge gaps with more frequent communication, may be a multi
  • Have skip level meetings at a lower cadence to make sure you have a broader picture
• Unclear deliverables
  • Keep track of deliverables with respect to there individual priority. Using RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) technique is generally helpful.
• Gap in expectations
  • Setting up clear expectations is important, if its not set, set it up.
• Conflicting Priorities
  • Map each of these priorities to a org level objective
  • Estimate in terms of value generation for short and long terms
  • And try to come up with relative priorities
• Unclear ownership
  • Re-define the ownership with clear boundaries.

Carrier Related

Q: What are you looking for in your next project

• A technically good team.
• Management with clear vision of long and short term goals.
• Great culture to work in.
• Decisions are being made objectively about the product.
• Solving a problem, that has impact on people’s lives.
• Value driven development and evolvment.

Q: What are the things you would avoid?

• The Feature Factor mentality. The goal should not be to add as many features as possible. But to solve a problem that makes our end user’s life easier.
• Promotion driven development, Demo Driven Development.

Could you explain an example of Demo Driven Development

Yes, we had regular demos with management stakeholders when working on Wingspan. Adding features to keep impressing became the primary objective of the product manager, resulting in too much tech debt.

Q: Why do you want to join X company?

I am looking for a combination of a good project, team, management, and culture where I enjoy working and have ample opportunity to grow. Any company which satisfies these are good for me.

You can have a different experience within the same company depending on your vertical, the problems you are solving, and the people you are working with; hence, during the interviews, I am still evaluating whether this is the right company.

Q: Your views on interview?

I have often experienced that interviewers feel that they are only interviewing the candidate without acknowledging that it’s a two-way process.

You, as an interviewer, are evaluating on behalf of the company; if I am the right fit for your team/company. And I, as a candidate, am trying to convince you that I am.

But at the same time, you also represent your team and the company and must convince if the company is the right fit for the candidate.

If you feel the candidate is good, other companies would have felt that too, so why should the candidate join your company?

So Why Should I join your company?