The Software Engineering Manager Interview Guide


Book Description

Interviewing can be challenging, time-consuming, stressful, frustrating, and full of disappointments. My goal is to help make things easier for you so you can get the engineering leadership job you want. The Software Engineering Manager Interview Guide is a comprehensive, no-nonsense book about landing an engineering leadership role at a top-tier tech company. You will learn how to master the different kinds of engineering management interview questions. If you only pick up one or two tips from this book, it could make the difference in getting the dream job you want. This guide contains a collection of 150+ real-life management and behavioral questions I was asked on phone screens and by panels during onsite interviews for engineering management positions at a variety of big-name and top-tier tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, LinkedIn, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Pinterest, Salesforce, Intuit, Autodesk, et al. In this book, I discuss my experiences and reflections mainly from the candidate’s perspective. Your experience will vary. The random variables include who will be on your panel, what exactly they will ask, the level of training and mood of the interviewers, their preferences, and biases. While you cannot control any of those variables, you can control how prepared you are, and hopefully, this book will help you in that process. I will share with you everything I’ve learned while keeping this book short enough to read on a plane ride. I will share tips I picked up along the way. If you are interviewing this guide will serve you as a playbook to prepare, or if you are hiring give you ideas as to what you might ask an engineering management candidate yourself. CONTENTS: Introduction Chapter 1: Answering Behavioral Interview Questions Chapter 2: The Job Interviews Phone Screens Prep Call with the Recruiter Onsite Company Values Coding, Algorithms and Data structures System Design and Architecture Interviews Generic Design Of A Popular System A Design Specific To A Domain Design Of A System Your Team Worked On Lunch Interview Managerial and Leadership Bar Raiser Unique One-Off Interviews Chapter 3: Tips To Succeed How To Get The Interviews Scheduling and Timelines Interview Feedback Mock Interviews Panelists First Impressions Thank You Notes Ageism Chapter 4: Example Behavioral and Competency Questions General Questions Feedback and Performance Management Prioritization and Execution Strategy and Vision Hiring Talent and Building a Team Working With Tech Leads, Team Leads and Technology Dealing With Conflicts Diversity and Inclusion




Peopleware


Book Description

Most software project problems are sociological, not technological. Peopleware is a book on managing software projects.




Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager


Book Description

Software startups make global headlines every day. As technology companies succeed and grow, so do their engineering departments. In your career, you'll may suddenly get the opportunity to lead teams: to become a manager. But this is often uncharted territory. How can you decide whether this career move is right for you? And if you do, what do you need to learn to succeed? Where do you start? How do you know that you're doing it right? What does "it" even mean? And isn't management a dirty word? This book will share the secrets you need to know to manage engineers successfully. Going from engineer to manager doesn't have to be intimidating. Engineers can be managers, and fantastic ones at that. Cast aside the rhetoric and focus on practical, hands-on techniques and tools. You'll become an effective and supportive team leader that your staff will look up to. Start with your transition to being a manager and see how that compares to being an engineer. Learn how to better organize information, feel productive, and delegate, but not micromanage. Discover how to manage your own boss, hire and fire, do performance and salary reviews, and build a great team. You'll also learn the psychology: how to ship while keeping staff happy, coach and mentor, deal with deadline pressure, handle sensitive information, and navigate workplace politics. Consider your whole department. How can you work with other teams to ensure best practice? How do you help form guilds and committees and communicate effectively? How can you create career tracks for individual contributors and managers? How can you support flexible and remote working? How can you improve diversity in the industry through your own actions? This book will show you how. Great managers can make the world a better place. Join us.




Ace the Software Engineering Interview


Book Description

Having Trouble with the Technical Interview? Are you contemplating a job change? Are you ready to begin the interview process? Is this your first interview experience? Perhaps you have been through this process multiple times. Do you find the programming interview process intimidating and overwhelming? Don't let fear and apprehension keep you from performing at your best during your next coding interview. A Technical Interview Preparation Framework During my years in the software engineering industry, I've been on both sides of the technical interview table numerous times. I have interviewed hundreds of Java developers and software engineers. I've played key roles in improving the software engineer hiring and recruiting processes at some large organizations. I've conducted the coding or programming interview, the generic technical interview, the core Java interview, the case interview, and the problem-solving interview. During this process, I've discovered that not all programming interviews are created equal. There are numerous coding and non-coding questions that can be used to help indicate the quality of a particular software engineering candidate. Leveraging those experiences, I will outline a framework that will help you understand the ideal time to change jobs, provide guidance on which organizations to seek out or avoid, and then guide you through the preparation and interview process in a way that will help you best represent yourself when it is time to showcase your talents and skills. Preparation is the key to a successful coding interview. This book will help set the expectations on what things an interviewer looks for in a technical candidate. Interview Questions and Answers There are a number of questions that you should have answered prior to your next interview. You need to understand what motivations are driving your job search. You should know what kinds of questions an interviewer is likely to ask you, and what level of importance is applied to your answers to various questions and question types. While a Java developer would expect to see core Java questions, and a .Net developer would expect to see core .Net questions, there are a host of other topic areas that are important to the interviewer. You will find the following included in this book. Questions you should ask yourself when thinking about a job switch. Questions to ask your interviewer to help determine the organizational health of your potential employer. Characteristics of a great software engineer. Essential software engineer skills and competencies, both coding and non-coding related. The types of interview questions you may encounter. Checklist to help you prepare for your next interview. Interview questions you may be asked, and what the interviewer is looking for in your answers. Questions you should ask your interviewer, and the answers you should be looking for.




The Open Organization


Book Description

Based on open source principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration, "open management" challenges conventional business ideas about what companies are, how they run, and how they make money. This book provides the blueprint for putting it into practice in your own firm. He covers challenges that have been missing from the conversation to date, among them: how to scale engagement; how to have healthy debates that net progress; and how to attract and keep the "Social Generation" of workers. Through a mix of vibrant stories, candid lessons, and tested processes, Whitehurst shows how Red Hat has blown the traditional operating model to pieces by emerging out of a pure bottom up culture and learning how to execute it at scale. And he explains what other companies are, and need to be doing to bring this open style into all facets of the organization.




System Design Interview - An Insider's Guide


Book Description

The system design interview is considered to be the most complex and most difficult technical job interview by many. Those questions are intimidating, but don't worry. It's just that nobody has taken the time to prepare you systematically. We take the time. We go slow. We draw lots of diagrams and use lots of examples. You'll learn step-by-step, one question at a time.Don't miss out.What's inside?- An insider's take on what interviewers really look for and why.- A 4-step framework for solving any system design interview question.- 16 real system design interview questions with detailed solutions.- 188 diagrams to visually explain how different systems work.




Cracking the Coding Interview


Book Description

Now in the 5th edition, Cracking the Coding Interview gives you the interview preparation you need to get the top software developer jobs. This book provides: 150 Programming Interview Questions and Solutions: From binary trees to binary search, this list of 150 questions includes the most common and most useful questions in data structures, algorithms, and knowledge based questions. 5 Algorithm Approaches: Stop being blind-sided by tough algorithm questions, and learn these five approaches to tackle the trickiest problems. Behind the Scenes of the interview processes at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Apple: Learn what really goes on during your interview day and how decisions get made. Ten Mistakes Candidates Make -- And How to Avoid Them: Don't lose your dream job by making these common mistakes. Learn what many candidates do wrong, and how to avoid these issues. Steps to Prepare for Behavioral and Technical Questions: Stop meandering through an endless set of questions, while missing some of the most important preparation techniques. Follow these steps to more thoroughly prepare in less time.




Cracking the PM Interview


Book Description

How many pizzas are delivered in Manhattan? How do you design an alarm clock for the blind? What is your favorite piece of software and why? How would you launch a video rental service in India? This book will teach you how to answer these questions and more. Cracking the PM Interview is a comprehensive book about landing a product management role in a startup or bigger tech company. Learn how the ambiguously-named "PM" (product manager / program manager) role varies across companies, what experience you need, how to make your existing experience translate, what a great PM resume and cover letter look like, and finally, how to master the interview: estimation questions, behavioral questions, case questions, product questions, technical questions, and the super important "pitch."




The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring


Book Description

Learn how the best teams hire software engineers and fill technical roles. The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring is the authoritative guide to growing software engineering teams effectively, written by and for hiring managers, recruiters, interviewers, and candidates. Hiring is rated as one of the biggest obstacles to growth by most CEOs. Hiring managers, recruiters, and interviewers all wrestle with how to source candidates, interview fairly and effectively, and ultimately motivate the right candidates to accept offers. Yet the process is costly, frustrating, and often stressful or unfair to candidates. Anyone who cares about building effective software teams will return to this book again and again. Inside, you'll find know-how from some of the most insightful and experienced leaders and practitioners—senior engineers, recruiters, entrepreneurs, and hiring managers—who’ve built teams from early-stage startups to thousand-person engineering organizations. The lead author of this guide, Ozzie Osman, previously led product engineering at Quora and teams at Google, and built (and sold) his own startup. Additional contributors include Aditya Agarwal, former CTO of Dropbox; Jennifer Kim, former head of diversity at Lever; veteran recruiters and startup founders Jose Guardado (founder of Build Talent and former Y Combinator) and Aline Lerner (CEO of Interviewing.io); and over a dozen others. Recruiting and hiring can be done well, in a way that has a positive impact on companies, employees, and every candidate. With the right foundations and practice, teams and candidates can approach a stressful and difficult process with knowledge and confidence. Ask your employer if you can expense this book—it's one of the highest-leverage investments they can make in your team.




An Elegant Puzzle


Book Description

A human-centric guide to solving complex problems in engineering management, from sizing teams to handling technical debt. There’s a saying that people don’t leave companies, they leave managers. Management is a key part of any organization, yet the discipline is often self-taught and unstructured. Getting to the good solutions for complex management challenges can make the difference between fulfillment and frustration for teams—and, ultimately, between the success and failure of companies. Will Larson’s An Elegant Puzzle focuses on the particular challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to performing succession planning—and provides a path to the good solutions. Drawing from his experience at Digg, Uber, and Stripe, Larson has developed a thoughtful approach to engineering management for leaders of all levels at companies of all sizes. An Elegant Puzzle balances structured principles and human-centric thinking to help any leader create more effective and rewarding organizations for engineers to thrive in.




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