Episode 369: Staying at a sinking ship and behavioral interview questions


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In this episode, Dave and Jamison answer these questions:

  1. My employer offered a retention bonus after:

    1. The CTO left two weeks after I arrived
    2. Two weeks later 1/4 of the staff was laid off
    3. Two weeks after that the COO left
    4. Two weeks after that 2 board members resigned
    5. Three or Four weeks after that the Director of Engineering left

    What does that mean? What do I look out for?

  2. I discovered your podcast just about 2 weeks ago and I love it, and I listen to them daily when driving to office, this make forced RTO feels a little bit better.

    I am currently a mid to senior SWE at FAANG. For the past 1.5 years I have been trying to interview for other opportunities at Staff level. I have good result with coding and design interview but I felt like I’m always falling short at behavioral questions. Example is “Tell me a time when you have a conflict”. How do I go about showing seniority in these type of questions? I led a few projects and powered through a lot of conflicts to deliver results at my company, at the same time I can’t think of a particular methodology I used to get through them. There were times I compromised, pushed back hard, meet halfway depends on situation. I dont want to show i’m a pushover at the same I don’t want to show i’m not easy to work with. What are the signals they are looking for for a Staff level engineer in behavoral style questions

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