Skip to main content

Introduction to Project Retrospective Questions

As an engineering manager, you'll be expected to plan and deliver complex engineering projects alongside engineers, product stakeholders, and other managers. In the interview process, these skills are often evaluated through project questions.

What to expect

Project questions come in many shapes and sizes. For example:

  • Amazon assigns a 1-2 page (~7500 characters) writing assignment to be turned in before the on-site interview. The question is typically something like, "Tell us about the project you're most proud of." Amazon wants to assess candidates' abilities to innovate and make high quality decisions/judgments.
  • Stripe asks candidates to prepare a presentation on a recent project.
  • Dropbox dedicates an hour-long interview round to a technical deep-dive.
  • Airbnb includes a project retrospective interview round.

...in addition to general questions which you'll get throughout the interview.

The project retrospective, also known as a technical deep-dive, is a conversational interview where you'll have a deep discussion about a technical project that you directly worked on in the past.

Typically you'll be told beforehand to prepare for a project discussion. The question may be framed simply as "Tell me about a project you're proud of," or "Talk about a project you worked on recently."

Much like the system design interview, these project discussions may cover the requirements, features, and technical tradeoffs you made in the project, and could optionally involve whiteboarding or diagrams to explain how the system works. Since you're discussing a project that you worked on, however, you're expected to go more in depth on the technical discussion, explain the role you served in the project, and discuss the final outcome or impact the project had on the company.

As an engineering manager, you may also be asked to discuss the people problems that arose on the team during the project, how you resolved them, and what you would do differently in the future.

What the interview assesses

Every company has different values and methods for evaluating candidates, which you should research beforehand. Generally, interviewers are looking for a mix of technical expertise, people management, and cross-functional collaboration skills, so be prepared to discuss team conflicts and stakeholder communication strategies as well as technical decisions. Regardless of company differences, these interviews typically evaluate along a few dimensions:

  • Technical competencies: Can you discuss and defend decisions you made in the project? Where were the technical complexities, and did you solve them effectively?
  • Communication skills: Can you effectively communicate your goals and decisions? Would you be able to hold a conversation with senior engineers and product managers?
  • Culture fit: Do you embody the company's principles of leadership? Are you collaborative? Can you help resolve conflicts that arise during projects?

How to prepare

In the rest of this course, we'll demonstrate how to prepare a compelling project retrospective. We'll also show you realistic examples from a range of engineering leaders. By the end of the course, you should have picked your own project to discuss and have a clear understanding of how you're going to talk about it.

Next Lesson