"Situation:
As a Product Manager at Cisco, I was leading the development of a new highly critical product for enterprise customers. Midway through the project, a key engineering team was reassigned due to an urgent security patch, leaving us understaffed with only six weeks left before a critical customer pilot.
Task:
I had to ensure the product launched on time without sacrificing key features, despite losing half of our engineering team. The challenge was to"
fuzzyicecream14 - "Situation:
As a Product Manager at Cisco, I was leading the development of a new highly critical product for enterprise customers. Midway through the project, a key engineering team was reassigned due to an urgent security patch, leaving us understaffed with only six weeks left before a critical customer pilot.
Task:
I had to ensure the product launched on time without sacrificing key features, despite losing half of our engineering team. The challenge was to"See full answer
"Break down into:
OPEX
#Employees x $avg. cost per employee
$Overhead (mktg, legal, compliance)
Content cost (creator payments) 80% of advert. revenue
Elec, cooling, maintenance
CAPEX
#Data centers
Avg servers per data center
Avg. cost $ per server"
James M. - "Break down into:
OPEX
#Employees x $avg. cost per employee
$Overhead (mktg, legal, compliance)
Content cost (creator payments) 80% of advert. revenue
Elec, cooling, maintenance
CAPEX
#Data centers
Avg servers per data center
Avg. cost $ per server"See full answer
"Clarifying questions
1/ Any other products in VC portfolio I need to be aware of - "no"
2/ Market focus? - "no"
Started off by stating database marketing
1/ SQL
2/ NoSQL
Data models mostly relational
Database trends
1/ Vector databases
2/ Growth in cloud / fully managed databases
3/ Multi cloud is important to avoid vendor lock in
Ultimately Price/performance is king
Competition
1/ Large cloud providers - AWS/GCP/Azure
2/ Legacy databases - Oracle/SQL Server
3/ Niche players - Vitess, Coc"
Glados - "Clarifying questions
1/ Any other products in VC portfolio I need to be aware of - "no"
2/ Market focus? - "no"
Started off by stating database marketing
1/ SQL
2/ NoSQL
Data models mostly relational
Database trends
1/ Vector databases
2/ Growth in cloud / fully managed databases
3/ Multi cloud is important to avoid vendor lock in
Ultimately Price/performance is king
Competition
1/ Large cloud providers - AWS/GCP/Azure
2/ Legacy databases - Oracle/SQL Server
3/ Niche players - Vitess, Coc"See full answer
"Clarify question and state assumptions:
Streetview from my understanding is compiled by a streetview car going out and taking multiple photos and then Google stitches this together to give us streetview.
I'm only going to look at the streetview outdoor experience, I know for e.g Google also has full views of some businesses, malls, museums etc so for the purposes of this I'm not going to calculate this.
For the purposes of this is it OK if we say how much storage required to store streetview"
Varun - "Clarify question and state assumptions:
Streetview from my understanding is compiled by a streetview car going out and taking multiple photos and then Google stitches this together to give us streetview.
I'm only going to look at the streetview outdoor experience, I know for e.g Google also has full views of some businesses, malls, museums etc so for the purposes of this I'm not going to calculate this.
For the purposes of this is it OK if we say how much storage required to store streetview"See full answer
"Clarifying Questions:
Is it a chain of supermarkets? Or just an individual market?
Is the revenue overall or just from one store?
What are the reasons for the revenue growth? Pandemic? New buildings around? Other?
What does the supermarket sell? Anything specialized? Local goods?
Is there an app/website available to order stuff?
10,000 - 50,000
Vision: Be the most customer centric store
Goals:
Able to reach out to as many users as they can.
Increase the user base while keeping th"
Anonymous Reindeer - "Clarifying Questions:
Is it a chain of supermarkets? Or just an individual market?
Is the revenue overall or just from one store?
What are the reasons for the revenue growth? Pandemic? New buildings around? Other?
What does the supermarket sell? Anything specialized? Local goods?
Is there an app/website available to order stuff?
10,000 - 50,000
Vision: Be the most customer centric store
Goals:
Able to reach out to as many users as they can.
Increase the user base while keeping th"See full answer
"After more than five years at my previous company, I had contributed significantly to many important projects and helped the team navigate critical transitions, such as our shift from a monolithic to a microservices architecture. However, over time, I realized that my goals and the direction of the company were no longer fully aligned. I felt I had outgrown the position and was ready for new challenges, where I could continue to grow both technically and professionally. Ultimately, I’m excited a"
Chinedu ekene O. - "After more than five years at my previous company, I had contributed significantly to many important projects and helped the team navigate critical transitions, such as our shift from a monolithic to a microservices architecture. However, over time, I realized that my goals and the direction of the company were no longer fully aligned. I felt I had outgrown the position and was ready for new challenges, where I could continue to grow both technically and professionally. Ultimately, I’m excited a"See full answer
"clarifying questions:
what is the business goal- we can consider monetization and user adoption. I will choose monetization
any resource constraint to be aware of?
which geographic location are we looking to pilot this product? we should consider the USA for now
framework
user segmentation
pain points
potential solutions
success metrics
implementation
summary
users
celebrants
well-wishers
brands
in prioritizing user segments, I will consider the user segment that"
Anonymous Finch - "clarifying questions:
what is the business goal- we can consider monetization and user adoption. I will choose monetization
any resource constraint to be aware of?
which geographic location are we looking to pilot this product? we should consider the USA for now
framework
user segmentation
pain points
potential solutions
success metrics
implementation
summary
users
celebrants
well-wishers
brands
in prioritizing user segments, I will consider the user segment that"See full answer
"Whenever I find resistance to my idea, my general approach is to :
Validate my idea
Identify if it is a political reason or is it a valid engineering tech reason
Assuming it is not political but it is resource/difference of opinions that are causing resistance.
Then I would try to do a quick POC and show a value proposition for the idea to get the buy-in.
One similar situation happened
The situation was that stakeholders were promised a feature that would decrease their number of ticket"
Jaim - "Whenever I find resistance to my idea, my general approach is to :
Validate my idea
Identify if it is a political reason or is it a valid engineering tech reason
Assuming it is not political but it is resource/difference of opinions that are causing resistance.
Then I would try to do a quick POC and show a value proposition for the idea to get the buy-in.
One similar situation happened
The situation was that stakeholders were promised a feature that would decrease their number of ticket"See full answer
"Clarify
What type of company are we? [We are a new company that is launching a smart closet]
Any constraints? [No constraints; you have infinite resources]
What’s the goal? [Enter the market/acquire users]
Closet for clothing only or for some commercial use? [Clothing only in homes]
How are we defining a 'smart' closet? Assuming we are incorporating technology? [Yes]
Which market? [You decide] --> Let's go with US market to start
Business Objective/Market Context
For the purpose of thi"
Helen - "Clarify
What type of company are we? [We are a new company that is launching a smart closet]
Any constraints? [No constraints; you have infinite resources]
What’s the goal? [Enter the market/acquire users]
Closet for clothing only or for some commercial use? [Clothing only in homes]
How are we defining a 'smart' closet? Assuming we are incorporating technology? [Yes]
Which market? [You decide] --> Let's go with US market to start
Business Objective/Market Context
For the purpose of thi"See full answer
"The Situation
About a year ago, we faced a period of high turnover and low morale within the data engineering team. This was particularly challenging as we were in the middle of a critical project to enhance our real-time market data analytics platform. Retaining and motivating the team was crucial to ensure the project’s success and maintain the operational efficiency of our trading systems.
Initial Steps
Recognizing the urgency, I initiated a comprehensive approach to address the underlying"
Scott S. - "The Situation
About a year ago, we faced a period of high turnover and low morale within the data engineering team. This was particularly challenging as we were in the middle of a critical project to enhance our real-time market data analytics platform. Retaining and motivating the team was crucial to ensure the project’s success and maintain the operational efficiency of our trading systems.
Initial Steps
Recognizing the urgency, I initiated a comprehensive approach to address the underlying"See full answer
"Is Google partnering with Uber?
Driverless cars - Waymo?
Why not Waymo One app?
Which regions?
Only for children? How about parents with younger children?
Is this a replacement of a school bus?
Only school or everywhere else? Any other place we need Parents with them?
Vision: Organize world’s information so everyone and anyone globally should be able to use that information to get insights, make decisions and even create solutions.
Goals:
Make transportation easier and risk-"
Anonymous Reindeer - "Is Google partnering with Uber?
Driverless cars - Waymo?
Why not Waymo One app?
Which regions?
Only for children? How about parents with younger children?
Is this a replacement of a school bus?
Only school or everywhere else? Any other place we need Parents with them?
Vision: Organize world’s information so everyone and anyone globally should be able to use that information to get insights, make decisions and even create solutions.
Goals:
Make transportation easier and risk-"See full answer
"Improve facebook’s feed.
Clarifying questions:
Do we want to look at desktop or mobile specifically? – Mobile
Is there a specific goal we have in mind that we are trying to meet or just general improvements? — General improvements, innovation
Clarify Product:
The Facebook newsfeed is the content feed that users see when landing on the app. The feed shows content posted by people users follow
Within the feed the user is offered updates on people they follow - friends, family, celebrities"
Kiley S. - "Improve facebook’s feed.
Clarifying questions:
Do we want to look at desktop or mobile specifically? – Mobile
Is there a specific goal we have in mind that we are trying to meet or just general improvements? — General improvements, innovation
Clarify Product:
The Facebook newsfeed is the content feed that users see when landing on the app. The feed shows content posted by people users follow
Within the feed the user is offered updates on people they follow - friends, family, celebrities"See full answer
"App I Don’t Like: Electrify America
What Electrify America Is Supposed to Do
Electrify America is an app designed to help electric vehicle (EV) owners locate, access, and pay for fast-charging stations across the U.S. The app provides real-time station availability, allows users to initiate and monitor charging sessions, and offers membership plans for discounted rates. Ideally, it should enable a seamless charging experience, especially for long-distance travelers relying on i"
fuzzyicecream14 - "App I Don’t Like: Electrify America
What Electrify America Is Supposed to Do
Electrify America is an app designed to help electric vehicle (EV) owners locate, access, and pay for fast-charging stations across the U.S. The app provides real-time station availability, allows users to initiate and monitor charging sessions, and offers membership plans for discounted rates. Ideally, it should enable a seamless charging experience, especially for long-distance travelers relying on i"See full answer
"2 Approaches:
1) The more intuitive approach is doing a multi-source BFS from all cats and storing the distance of closest cats. Then do a dfs/bfs from rat to bread.
Time Complexity: O(mn + 4^L) where L is path length, worst case L could be mn
Space Complexity: O(m*n)
2) The first approach should be fine for interviews. But if they ask to optimize it further, you can use Binary Search. Problems like "Finding max of min distance" or "Finding min of max" could be usually solved by BS.
"
Karan K. - "2 Approaches:
1) The more intuitive approach is doing a multi-source BFS from all cats and storing the distance of closest cats. Then do a dfs/bfs from rat to bread.
Time Complexity: O(mn + 4^L) where L is path length, worst case L could be mn
Space Complexity: O(m*n)
2) The first approach should be fine for interviews. But if they ask to optimize it further, you can use Binary Search. Problems like "Finding max of min distance" or "Finding min of max" could be usually solved by BS.
"See full answer