> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://garylai1990.gitbook.io/behavioral-questions/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://garylai1990.gitbook.io/behavioral-questions/questions/common-questions.md).

# Common Questions

Tell me about a time when you had to make a quick decision that was going to have a significant impact on the organization? Give a story where you handle urgent issues in a logical and professional manner. 

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| In my most recent work, I joined a law office as a software engineer. They had a legacy system from an out source company. The system was doing okay, but many problem arose. | My task was to help the team to build the the software  in house. The manager asked me to decide the stack everyone gonna use for future. Either to use an old stack, or use a new stack. The timeline of the software development was tight as well. The executive team wanted to start using the software as soon as possible. The original stack was on django and jquery. | <p>In the end, I decided to use the new stack for the refactoring. We start using Ruby on Rails and React for the new stack. </p><p>The reason why I decided to do this way was because three reasons.</p><ol><li>Rails might not the best framework in the world. However, it has many mature conventions that is most suitable for this small business company. When I was there, the performance was not the top priority for the company. It focuses on the maintenance level and the how the ecosystem  is friendly for the company. </li><li>It's because of the culture in Taiwan. In the job market. It is easier to find an experienced Rails developers in Taiwan than a Django developer. </li><li>Also, I know the learning curve might be hard for other people, I also tutoring them in the early development time. </li></ol> | <p>Changing the stack was a big decision for team of company. However, I was glad we did this. </p><p>From the feedback of other engineer, he was happy with doing the web development with Rails. And the development speed was faster than before. </p><p>Second, we abandoned jquery for every websites we have. There were lots of dependencies were outdated and caused performance issues, but know there were all gone. <br>We had 5 content marketing websites. The web page score was only 10 to 20, and the SEO was bad. However, now each website has at least 90  out of 100 and the SEO was much improved. There was a website grew from zero to millions of visitors per months in 3 months. </p> |

Tell me about a time when you found a simple solution to a complex problem.

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| <p>In the past, we didn't have a bug report/feature requests system for the software we were developing. </p><ol><li>They talked to PM. </li><li>They send us direct message. </li><li>Bugs sometimes was reported on Monday meeting. </li></ol> | <p>My manager don't want to ask attorney to use more Software to have the ticketing system. </p><p>This ticketing system was added to our roadmap. However we only have three software engineers, and there are still many tings to do. </p> | <p>I have googled many mature open source ticketing system. There were either too complicated to use, or don't support Chinese. So hard to integrate it with our current system. </p><p>I came up with we already have a good ticketing system was the Github issues. I knew this was definitely not okay for the attorney. And the best format those attorney  would like to use was  Google Form. I found there was a webhook API that once the attorney submitted the request or bug report. I write a script on the webhook. The script can help us to make the request as an issue on Github. </p> | <p>The result was tremendous. </p><ul><li>We barely need an other meeting for feature requests and bug reports. It was usually one to two hours per week. </li><li>The PM can easily helped us prioritize the request on the same place which our dev team are used to work with. </li><li>We can easily track what we have done this week and send a release note to everyone. </li></ul> |
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Describe a situation when you had to work with incomplete data or information.&#x20;

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Tell me about a time when you had to take a calculated risk at work.

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| ------------------------------------------------------------- | - | - | - |
| The thing I did was about to change the stack of the company. |   |   |   |

Tell me how you would complete a project or task if you had limited time or resources.&#x20;

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| <p>I think the time management is really important. </p><p></p><p>In my recent work, we only had three engineers including me in the team. However, we have one web based software and five content websites to matin. The human resources were really limited for both maintaining project and developing features. </p> | My goal for the job was to help the dev team to optimized their work force. | <p>I did some things to make the improvement. </p><ol><li>Is about the time management. I tried to make the dev team to have as less interruptions as I can. In the past, many people just walk to the dev team to fix something as soon as possible. I started coordinate with other team leader and ask them let us prioritize the importance to let our team member avoid the context switching frequently. </li><li>Workflow, I established the software development workflow for my team. In the past, deployment was randomly happened in any time of the day. I also ask them start writing tests and use linter for better code quality. In this way, we save a lot of the time back and forth to debug and rollback. </li></ol> | <p>The  shift has been doing great. In the past one software engineer had to work really late almost everyday. The many many issues were put in the backlog. </p><p>However, all the team member can easily solve 5 or more issues  per day. The system has been really steady right now. We only had really serious downtime in the past year. </p> |

Tell me about a time when you experienced conflict within a team. Respect each other's idea and discuss make an optimum solution!&#x20;

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Give me two examples of when you have gone above of beyond what was expected.&#x20;

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Have you ever failed at work? If so tell me what happened and how you reacted.&#x20;

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When have you had to overcome a challenging situation at work?&#x20;

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When have you had a disagreement at work either  with a work colleague or a manager?&#x20;

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Give me a situation where you have previously shown one of Amazon's Leadership Principles at work.&#x20;

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Tell me about an unpopular decision you had to make at work.&#x20;

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Give me one thing you will like the most about being a leader with Amazon and one thing you will dislike.&#x20;

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Tell me a time when you had to give bad news to a member of your team.&#x20;

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Give ma an example when you led a team of people to achieve an organization's goal or objectives.&#x20;

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Tell me about a time when you had to persuade someone to follow your course faction.&#x20;

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When did you have to overcome a difficult challenge at work?&#x20;

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Give me an example at work where you improved how you did something to achieve a better outcome?&#x20;

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Tell me about a time when you learned something new that was outside of your comfort zone.&#x20;

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| I was building the law practice management software at the law offices. | My task was to refactor the software. Mainly focusing on the high availability and performance improvement. And develop the features the can helped lawyers to improve their workflow. | As a web developer, I always have the entrepreneur mind set in my mind. I really want those lawyers love the products. Thus, I step out my cube often and ask a lawyers can I work with him a day to learn how is the real lawyers day life. I also asked my manager to approve my request. Thus, I had many chances to understand what they really need for their daily job. When I back to the development, I can have a better understanding of what should we focus. For example, I notice that lawyers has to memorize all his clients to avoid the conflict interests. They are used to it, so they didn't ask us for the feature request. However, their secretary can't know all the clients name. | In the end, I build a simple name and case search feature for them. It can easily help them to find the conflict interests for the new clients. The lawyer's secretary can also use this feature to help lawyers to notice this issue in advance. |

Tell me about a time when you received criticism from a manager or a work colleague. How did you react to the feedback?&#x20;

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| It was in the last startup experience, I received from my cofounder. He told me I was smart to make a quick decision. However, sometimes, I make other people feel like I have already make the final decision. | That's  a great criticism I have ever had. Because I was not a person that can not listen to other people's opinion. Most of time I just wanted to move fast. | <p>I realized that the reason why he would said that was because my words come out of my mind too fast. </p><p>I know that's not a good thing for the team's good. Because I can't be always right. </p><p>I started to talk to myself every time I want to talk my opinion, listen to other people first. </p><p>If they don't speak, ask what are they thinking first. If no one else is really talking, then I start to talk to my opinion. </p> | And I am not what I was used to be. |

Tell me about a time when you analyzed information carefully to overcome a challenging task or project.&#x20;

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Tell me a time when you had to make an effective decision under pressure.&#x20;

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| The situation was in my last startup our payment gateway was cut off all of sudden. | We were an e commerce business. And customers complains came to our customer support system really quick. My cofounder and I was thinking that's the end of the world. We might need to close our business. because we don't know how soon we can accept the payment and make the business come back again. | <p>However, i decide to face to the customers. Although we had a customer support team, I start answering to all the customers and explain the situation we have. </p><p>And in the meanwhile, I started to talk to every single person I know who might have a solution for us. </p><p>It took me couple of months, but I finally find another payment solution partner who are willing do business with us. </p><p>Next, after we sign the contract, I work day and night to setup the payment system with our system. </p> | In the end, I was glad that I didn't give up. The business came back again. The revenue wasn't back like before. However, it at least steady grew overtime. And we gather the feedback from the customers who have been waiting for us for months. Most of them gave us really positive feedback and non of them gave us negative feedback. |


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