How to Answer Decision-Making Questions
Decision-making questions present a scenario where you’re asked to make a product decision. Often, your choices are similar and there's no obvious winner. For example, you may be asked:
“You're a PM on Facebook Watch. Your team is working on a redesign. This redesign improved the watch time, but it also caused a drop in likes and comments. Should you ship this redesign?”
The key to delivering a solid answer is to spend time clarifying product and company goals and defining decision criteria upfront.
What interviewers are looking for
Interviewers are looking the same skill set as in RCA questions, but there is added emphasis on:
- Product thinking
- Strategic thinking and business acumen
- Ability to evaluate options
Note that decision-making questions are an excellent opportunity for you to showcase your domain expertise, so don’t shy away from referencing personal experience.
A framework for answering decision-making questions
Decision-making questions are designed to take roughly 25 minutes. Follow this 4-step process to arrive at a decision efficiently and confidently.
- Step 1: Clarify and gather information
- Step 2: Set decision criteria
- Step 3: Evaluate options
- Step 4: Decide and recap
Let’s continue using the above question as an example. Assume you’ve been asked:
"You're a PM on Facebook Watch. Your team is working on a redesign. This redesign improved watch time, but it also caused a drop in likes and comments. Should you ship this?"
Step 1: Clarify and gather information
Decision-making questions require you to make a big decision without much context, so always begin by asking clarifying questions. In the next step, you’ll begin to explain your criteria for evaluating your options, so your goal here should be to gather enough information to understand how your decision will ultimately affect business and define your priorities as a PM.
Clarify any unclear terms including company names, important nouns, and adjectives. If a metric was referenced, be sure to gather more information about that metric. What is the baseline value you’re comparing against? Is the change positive or negative (or is this unclear?)
Don’t hesitate to ask questions about how the scenario you’ve been given affects the business, but be aware that your interviewer might not offer that information. In that case, it’s fair to make assumptions based on what you know of the product or company and its goals, but be sure to communicate any assumptions to your interviewer.
For our example question “You're a PM on Facebook Watch. Your team is working on a redesign. This redesign improved watch time, but it also caused a drop in likes and comments. Should you ship this?” There is a lot of missing information. You’d want to ask specifically about product and company goals, clarify the vague metrics referenced, and try to gather details about the redesign. For example:
Product and company goals
- “How does Facebook Watch fit into Meta’s mission and strategic goals?”
Metrics
- “How much did watch time increase, and how much did likes and comments decrease?”
- “Should I assume total watch time increased, or is this watch time per session?”
- “Are these likes and comment metrics specific to video, or are we seeing this effect across other types of content?”
Redesign
- “Why did we decide to redesign Facebook Watch?”
- "What was changed?"
Let’s assume your interviewer told you that total watch time increased with the redesign, and that likes and comments are down for video only. Otherwise, they told you not to focus on the specifics of the redesign, and that you should assume whatever makes sense to you.
Step 2: Set decision criteria
Next, set decision criteria based on the information you gleaned in the last step.
Setting decision criteria is similar to goal setting in other interviews. Aim to sum up the most important factor(s) to consider based on the context defined above. Clear decision criteria will help you stay focused and objective while building support for your decision later, so we recommend spending significant time on this step.
Your decision criteria will hinge on what’s most important to your product and to the company. Use your judgment to figure out what’s most relevant to your question. Common areas to consider include:
- Strategic product or company goals
- The current market including key competitors, trends, pending regulation, etc.
- Clear user needs or pain points
- The company’s mission
Explain your thought process to your interviewer and repeat your key takeaways before moving on. If you have access to a whiteboard, record your decision criteria so you can refer back later.
Continuing our example question “You're a PM on Facebook Watch. Your team is working on a redesign. This redesign improved watch time, but it also caused a drop in likes and comments. Should you ship this?” There are many contexts you might explore. For instance:
- “Meta’s mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together, and video is a rich medium for communicating.
- “Video allows for better monetization through ads, both as a platform for display and as a way to keep users engaged.”
- “Strategically, Meta has invested in video content across several platforms and is in close competition with other platforms that are video-forward, like TikTok and YouTube.”
- “In particular, short-form video is a fast-growing and important sector in video content. Meta released Instagram Reels to compete in the space, and Reels also surface on Facebook.”
“Given all this, it’s critical that Facebook is seen as a go-to destination for video, both for sharing and watching. As the market for video changes, Facebook has an opportunity to become a leader in the space.
This will be the basis of my decision criteria moving forward. I will evaluate my options based on how well either shipping or not shipping the redesign supports the goal of making Facebook a go-to destination for video, particularly short-form video.”
Step 3: Generate and weigh options
Now it’s time to come up with options. If you haven’t already been given options to choose from, brainstorm a few solutions. Variation is good; coming up with three entirely different solutions is better than coming up with five variations on the same idea.
Keep your mind open, and try not to evaluate options against your criteria just yet. If you do, you’re prone to making a decision right away and sandbagging the other option(s).
Briefly discuss:
- The potential effects of each option, both positive and negative
- Any important dependencies that might affect the overall outcome
- The tradeoffs associated with each
Be sure to make the pros and cons of each option very explicit. This will ensure that your decision rests on logic rather than gut instinct. Only after you’ve fully fleshed out options, dependencies, and trade-offs should you begin to weigh your options against your decision criteria.
For our Facebook Watch example question, your options are already clear. You’ve been asked whether you should or should not ship the redesign — no brainstorming is required. Instead, weigh your options:
“Shipping the redesign improves watch time. This means users are watching more and/or longer videos, learning from them, or otherwise enjoying them. Increased watch time also increases ad revenue. Creators will be happy that they’ll get more views and revenue. However, a reduction in likes and comments might reduce the sense of community around video — a key component of Meta’s company mission. For short-form content, keeping users engaged with the videos and building a behavioral loop around watching is particularly important.
On the other hand, not shipping leads to more comments and likes. Comments and likes are how users communicate about video content; their voice. Viewers and creators might form stronger bonds because of that two-way communication. However, many creators won’t care about comments more than views and watch time.”
Step 4: Decide and recap
Finally, decide which option offers the most benefits and fewest risks based on your decision criteria. If you followed the previous steps, your decision should be fairly to easy to justify.
Quickly recap the logic behind your decision criteria and your choice given your options. Tradeoffs will have been covered in the previous step, so your evaluation of your answer will focus on what to do next. Consider mitigation strategies or compromises you might make, and offer ideas for solving potential issues that might come up.
As we close our example answer, recall that you’ve come to the following conclusions:
- It’s critical that Facebook is seen as a go-to destination for video, both for sharing and watching
- Shipping the redesign improves total watch time
- Not shipping leads to more comments and likes
Close with something like:
”Evaluating against my decision criteria, which is that it’s critical that Facebook is a go-to destination for video, I’ll choose to ship. While comments and likes are valuable, watching video is the core behavior that viewers come to do and it supports creators more directly. A decrease in likes and comments might degrade the sense of community initially, but many creators won’t care about likes and comments more than watch time because watch time affects their revenue. If we’re not at risk of losing creators with the redesign, I’m confident we’ll continue to draw viewers, particularly in short-form content.
Given more time, I would like to investigate why the redesign is reducing likes and comments, as both are important for cultivating the sense of community Meta strives for. There may be an easy fix for bringing likes and comments back up without scrapping the redesign. For example, if the redesign made the video player bigger and likes and comments got cut off on the page, I’d consider proposing a new feature where likes and comments shift to the top of the screen.”
“Okay” vs. “good” vs. “great” answers
- An okay answer explains the trade-offs between options. The candidate does a reasonable job evaluating these trade-offs and makes a coherent argument for their choice, drawing on product or strategic insights.
- A good answer places the situation within a larger product context. This context informs the criteria used to evaluate the situation. The candidate paints a picture of how the trade-offs affect the product as a whole and their decision is well-supported.
- A great answer demonstrates a deep understanding of the product or strategy, allowing the candidate to identify the key factors at play. The trade-offs and their impact on the product are deeply thought through and go beyond obvious, immediate effects. Additionally, the candidate might even suggest how to execute their decision, say by finding a middle-ground approach that optimizes the benefits or by devising a release strategy that minimizes risk.
Common pitfalls
- Deciding too early. Don’t make a snap decision when you hear the options. Keep your mind open throughout, and you may be surprised to find another option that makes more sense. Choosing too early often leads to downplaying your evaluation of the other options to try to “convince” your interviewer. They’ll wonder why you missed potential benefits.
- Not setting decision criteria early. These questions are about trade-offs, so you have to be able to evaluate what trade-offs make sense. If you don’t have decision criteria, you’ll end up making a decision after the fact, leaving you with a weaker argument.