Ridhima K.

Group Product Manager, Google

Dropbox

Dropbox Engineering Manager (EM) Interview Guide

Dropbox EM candidates are assessed on people management skills (including recruitment, people, and teams) as well as execution and technical skills. Overlap between groups is heavy, so we recommend you think about people management and technical considerations whenever you review past projects. Both contexts are relevant. 

Dropbox is looking for EMs who can create high-performing teams. This starts with recruiting high-performing individuals, and empowering them with the tools they need to succeed in their own aspirations. Recruiting is a large part of your job as an EM, so expect a good number of questions on your recruitment philosophy.

You'll be asked questions like:
- How would you build up a pipeline of high-performing candidates?
- Tell me about a time you had to work hard to recruit someone to you team. What did you have to do? How did it work out?
- What are you looking for when you screen resumes? 

While there are no right or wrong answers, Dropbox is looking for you to display an eye for talent and communication skills that allow you to get a sense of who candidates are and what they bring to the table. If it's a good fit, you should be able to "sell" a candidate on joining your team. 

Tell me about a time you had a conflict with someone. How did you resolve it?

Hire/Develop The Best: Team Member

How to Answer Questions about Persuading Cross-functional Team Members

People: Recruiting

Great leaders are highly focused on helping their team members grow in their careers. Professional growth drives company growth. Can you win the trust of your team? Are you able to help them develop and execute growth plans in accordance with their goals? 

People management rounds will also include questions around performance management. You'll want to practice summarizing your management philosophy including how you structure 1:1s, how you deal with underperformers and how you manage super stars. 

You'll be asked questions like:
- How do you approach your 1:1s with your reports? How do you structure them? What are your objectives and what do you think are your reports’ expectations?
- Tell me about a case where you’ve had a highly effective engineer want to switch tracks but wasn't necessarily a great fit. How did you handle the situation?
- How do you deal with poor performers? How do you identify them and how do you rectify the situation? What if they spike in certain areas but fall short in others?

Questions like these can be tough as people management situations are nuanced. Ultimately, your interviewers want to see evidence that you can navigate tricky management responsibilities with grace. We recommend [creating your personal story bank](/courses/tpm/behavioral-interviews-creating-story-bank) so that you come prepared with clear examples you can speak from. 

Earn Trust: Mistake

Highest Standards: Raising the Bar

People: Career Growth

We interviewed a Dropbox engineering manager who told us "people management is a means to execution management. The real goal is getting the most out of your team." 

At Dropbox, team and execution managent are tightly linked. Interviewers are looking for candidates who understand that engineers who feel supported and challenged will be the most productive. 

You'll be asked questions like:
- Tell me about your ideal team composition in terms of mix of skills and experience levels.
- How do you prioritize requests?
- Tell me about your best-performing and worst-performing teams, and why. 

Surface-level answers are not going to cut it. Be thoughtful and nuanced in your responses. Our Dropbox EM advises "Don't have ready answers to every problem. People are incredible complex! You have to dig into things and really identify the details."

When prepping for this round, spend some extra time working on your [story bank](/courses/tpm/behavioral-interviews-creating-story-bank). You've probably got succinct stories that convey your contributions. Take a step back and think about all the stakeholders of your project and what their motivations were. Focus in on your team, and how you organized and executed through them to deliver the project. Think through the people issues - confusion, conflict, etc. Make sure you can speak to the more difficult times. And don't forget to summarize what you learned. 

 

Introduction to Execution Questions

Discussing Tradeoffs

People: Teams and Execution

You'll go through both management deep-dive and technical deep-dives toward the end of the loop. Deep-dives (sometimes known as project retrospectives) focus on one particular project. The purpose is to get to know you and your capabilities at a very granular level. 

The structure will be the same for both deep-dives. Your interviews are exploring your experience. At a high level, these characteristics are assessed: 

- Technical understanding of projects you own (technical)
- Technical decision-making (technical and management) 
- Working relationships with engineers (management) 
- Clarity of communication (technical and management)

As you can see, there's a lot of overlap. As an EM, you'll spend less time coding but it's critical you have a deep understanding of the technology you own. Dependencies and business objectives are also deeply important. 

Here are some questions you might see:
- Describe the architecture of the current system. What are its dependencies?
- Describe a difficult decision you made. How did you work with your engineering team to arrive at a solution? What alternatives were explored? What were the pros/cons of each?
- What makes this project complex?
- Which external groups did you partner with? How did you communicate with them to ensure you delivered the best project possible?

To prep for these rounds, we recommend reviewing tech fundamentals relevant to your domain -- if needed -- and browsing through our [system design course](https://www.tryexponent.com/courses/fundamentals-system-design/). Once you feel ready to talk through details, return to your [story bank](/courses/tpm/behavioral-interviews-creating-story-bank) and choose a technically complex project. Add technical detail. Include trade-offs and edge cases, and write down logically sound argments for any tech decisions you made. Then, think through the management aspects. How did you work with your group to arrive at solutions? What outside stakeholders did you collaborate with? Did you have to persuade others to change direction? If so, how did it go?

Finally, take this summary and translate details into [the STAR Framework](https://www.tryexponent.com/courses/cross-functional-tpm/star-framework). This will help you communicate succinctly during the interview. 

Technical Behavioral Mock Interview

Think Big: Difficult Decision

Tell Me About a Technical Decision You Made

Deep-Dives: Management and Technical

Dropbox TPM (Technical Program Manager) Interview Guide

Generally, the interview questions types at Dropbox break down into the following categories. There's heavy overlap across the different interviews. 

The Dropbox TPM program sense interivew tests your general TPM capabilities, such as your ability to manage risks, deadlines, changes, and requirements. These questions are the bread and butter of being a techincal program manager, and you'll rely heavily on your previous experience with technical program management.

[Here is a list of program sense questions recently asked at Dropbox.](https://www.tryexponent.com/questions?company=dropbox&role=tpm&type=program-sense)

To prepare for these questions, review some of the questions in our TPM interview prep course's program sense section.

How to Answer Program Sense Interview Questions

Setting up a Program for an AI Data Product

End-to-End Program Management

Mock Interview (Google TPM): Product Deprecation

Program Sense

In the Dropbox TPM deep dive interview, you'll go "deeper" with a Dropbox TPM on how you solved a technical problem. Consider this interview to be more like a conversation than an interview. Throughout the discussion, highlight aspects where you made tough technical decisions or had to work cross-functionally with other team members. 

Dropbox recommends preparing by reflecting on your experiences beforehand. We recommend [creating your personal story bank](/courses/tpm/behavioral-interviews-creating-story-bank) so that you can come in the interview with clear examples you can speak from. Specifically, focus on brainstorming stories with traits you think your interviewer might ask you about. 

Amazon Behavioral PM, Technical Mock Interview

Deep Dive

Dropbox TPM technical interviews involve meeting with engineering managers and technical leads to assess your technical acumen. Can you work on highly technical projects? Can you handle making decisions about technical tradeoffs? How would you handle scenarios where you need to collect more information?

These questions often involve heavy knowledge of system design concepts, so be sure to review those before the interview. 

[Here is a list of common system design interview questions.](https://www.tryexponent.com/questions?role=tpm&type=system-design)


To prepare for the technical interviews, review our [TPM interview course](/courses/tpm) system design section and [software engineering interview course](/courses/software-engineering) at a high-level. Are there areas you're weaker in? Focus more prep to review technical concepts and prepare for the interview. 

How to Answer System Design Questions

How to Cover Load Balancing in a System Design Interview

Design Instagram

Tips for System Design Questions

Design a URL Shortener

Technical 

Lastly, you'll be asked questions about your working relationship with engineering and team culture fit. This is also a great time to learn more about the role and ask questions to your interviewer. 

Similar to the deep dive, we recommend [creating your personal story bank](/courses/tpm/behavioral-interviews-creating-story-bank) so that you can come in the interview with clear examples you can speak from. 

One tip for these interview questions is to show passion and enthusiasm for the role and for working at Dropbox! 

Behavioral Interviews: Creating Your Story Bank

Behavioral

Dropbox’s interview questions consist of the following types:

**Estimation:** Estimation questions assess your ability to break down large, intractable problems into smaller, solvable chunks.

Practice Estimation Questions:
- [How many self driving Street View cars does it take to map the US?](https://www.tryexponent.com/course/lesson/self-driving-cars)
- [How much is Airbnb's annual revenue?](https://www.tryexponent.com/course/lesson/airbnb-revenue)
- How much storage does Dropbox use?

**Analytical Skills:** Analytical PM interview questions are squarely left-brain-type exercises. Can you reason with metrics? Do you understand how to think critically about user feedback and bugs? How do you approach experiments in product?

Practice Analytical Questions:
- How would you design an experiment to validate the success of a new landing page?
- [Pick YouTube's key metrics](https://www.tryexponent.com/course/lesson/youtube-metrics)
- What are some common biases that might invalidate an experiment?

**Product Design:** Product design questions are the ultimate type of product management question. These are the most unique to the product management role, and, often, the most fun. When it comes to product design, Dropbox prefers show don’t tell. Expect open ended questions demanding structured thinking from you.

Practice Product Questions:
- [What is your favorite product and how would you improve it?](https://www.tryexponent.com/course/lesson/favorite-product)
- What makes Snapchat stories a well designed product?
- What’s the most important part of your design process?

**Product Strategy:** Strategy questions are a new category recently added to Dropbox’s list of interview question types. They assess your ability to reason about competitive landscapes and high-level product direction decisions.

Practice Strategy Questions:
- How does X product help Y company reach its goals?
- Given a list of features or projects, how would you prioritize them?
- What are some trends in the productivity SaaS?

**Technical:** Technical questions assess your ability to understand and reason with engineers and engineering problems. While coding is never asked in the interview, these questions may involve understanding of technical limitations and architecture.

Practice Technical Questions:
- Tell me about a time where you worked with engineers.
- How do you influence or motivate your technical partners?
- Recall a decision you made that had a technical tradeoff. What was the decision and why did you make it?
 

**Take-home:** Product management is multi-faceted, and so is the interview process. While interviews are a great assessment tool, companies are also interested in seeing sample work outputs from PM candidates. These take-home assignments vary widely in terms of detail. For Dropbox a common ask is to present a previous project that you’ve worked on with others.

Sample Questions during the Take-home:
- What were the goals of the project and why?
- What would you have done differently?
- How did your team work together?

## Sample Dropbox NGPM Interview Questions

Here are some of the more common Dropbox NGPM interview questions:
- What is your favorite product and why? See [Exponent’s guide to answering this question here.](https://www.tryexponent.com/course/lesson/favorite-product)
- Tell me about a project that you worked on with others.
- Design a car stereo.
- How would you influence others to help move a project forward?

Sample Questions

Dropbox New Grad PM (NGPM) Interview Guide

Amazon

Asana

Better.com

Facebook (Meta)

Google

Microsoft

Rakuten

Slack

Questions like this are often asked at Amazon to assess a candidate's fit with Amazon's Leadership Principles.

Dropbox

Interview Guides

Engineering Manager

Technical Program Manager

Associate Product Manager

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Interview Questions

Tell me about a time you had a conflict with someone. How did you resolve it and what did you learn?

What's the project you're most proud of?

Tell me about a tough decision you made during a project.

Top Dropbox Coaches

Ridhima K.

Top Dropbox Coaches

Ridhima K.