Engineering manager · Hiring and hard conversations

Low performance and difficult conversations

The round where interviewers find out whether you have actually managed people. Low performers, the engineer who is not a team player, disagreeing with someone more senior than you, and the person who has been at the same level for four years — each has a specific thing being tested, and one of them requires you to say out loud that you would fire someone.

26 min read Full lesson in the app Patterns: diagnose-before-treating, escalation-ladder

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Before this: hiring-and-interview-rubrics

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The round where interviewers find out whether you have actually managed people. Low performers, the engineer who is not a team player, disagreeing with someone more senior than you, and the person who has been at the same level for four years — each has a specific thing being tested, and one of them requires you to say out loud that you would fire someone. This walkthrough runs about 26 minutes, with runnable code you can edit and re-run as you read. A new account gets 7 days of Pro free, no card required.

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