Google Technical Program Manager Interview Questions

Jane D. - "My approach to dealing with difficult stakeholders has always been: Engage - Directly engage with the stakeholder, meet or chat Listen - Listen to what they have to say, patiently. Understand - Understand their POV, even if it is impossible at some times Ask - Ask clarifying questions. Why? When? What? Engage again - Keep them in the loop until there is closure For example, we were in the final stages of a very important, strategic project for our organization. I was leading th"See full answer

Sreenisha S. - "Let me tell you about a time where a website I managed suddenly showed slow performance and the mistake on our side was it was unnoticed until a user reported the issue to management. As a PM for that project, I took full responsibility of the situation and worked with the engineering team to quickly resolve it. This mistake taught me the importance of focusing and monitoring non functional requirements as well in addition to new feature development /adoption where I was mostly spending my time"See full answer

Ross B. - "I most want to communicate a few principals of conflict resolution that I believe were integral in this situation, which are mutual respect, a results orientation, an unwavering focus on the user. To that end, here’s how I’d like to structure this answer: First, I’ll tell you about the project we were working on, to provide some background for you. Second, I’ll describe the disagreement. Third, I’ll describe how we arrived at a solution, and finally, I’ll discuss how those 3 conflict resolut"See full answer

Aabid S. - "We had a huge launch on September 1st of this year where we completely redesigned our application from the grounds up and also migrated to a new platform (React.JS). This project took us 8 months and the launch was a huge deal for the team. Unfortunately the launch wasn't as smooth as we expected and despite doing multiple rounds of QA, some major issues cropped up in the core part of the app right after launch and our client was quite upset since it was disrupting their day-to-day workflow. "See full answer

Ekta M. - "I would start with some clarifying questions like: Is there a deadline when all these needs to be updated by? Do we have upgrade scripts ready? When do we have change freeze? Once I have these few clarifying answers I would start planning: I would meet with all the teams involved in the upgrades Document any resources downtime during the upgrade create a risk registry along with mitigation plan Roll back plan create a phased rollout plan based on deadline Post upgrade get a"See full answer

Aabid S. - "I work at a startup that makes software for Law Enforcement and the FBI. Our product analyzes calls being made by prison inmates and "listens" for predictors of violence and criminal behavior. Our clients are some of the top state prisons in the country. Recently one of the largest states in the country decided to evaluate our product for their prison system. I demo'd the product to the officers and they seemed to like everything. During the presentation they asked us if the product was ADA com"See full answer

Bipin R. - "As you know, this is the most important question for any interview. Here is a structure I like to follow, Start with 'I'm currently a SDE/PM/TPM etc with XYZ company.... ' Mention how you got into PM/TPM/SDE field (explaining your journey) Mention 1 or 2 accomplishments Mention what you do outside work (blogging, volunteer etc) Share why are you looking for a new role Ask the interviewer if they have any questions or will like to dive deep into any of your experience"See full answer

Ashish B. - "Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The increasing ability of machines to learn and act intelligently will absolutely transform our world. It is also the driving force behind many of the other trends on this list. The Internet of Things (IoT). This refers to the ever-growing number of “smart” devices and objects that are connected to the internet. Such devices are constantly gathering and transmitting data, further fueling the growth in Big Data and AI. **Blockchains and"See full answer

Anchal V. - "understand the top priorities and rank each feature based on value and effort criteria. Scope: emphasize on clarity and risk assessment of the features. In tough deadlines what is must within the feature. highlight the tradeoff early based on the above two"See full answer

Ashley C. - "I follow a variation of the RICE framework when prioritizing how I ship product features. I start by looking at: Reach: Because the customer segmentation across our product portfolio is so similar, I tend to hold a lot of weight on product features that will maximize our customer reach with a minimal LOE. Impact: After establishing which customer segments will benefit from the product feature, I determine the urgency and estimated impact on each customer segment based on customer i"See full answer

Saket S. - "I will divide my answer in 2 parts: Process I use for managing risks in any Project I will explain a real life situation where a Risk occurred and how I managed it Process for Risk Management can be broken down into 3 parts: Risk Identification: Risk identification is a team effort and is an ongoing process that happens throughout the Project. Technical Risks are usually identified during design/build/testing stage. I maintain a Risk register document to capture all the risks identified"See full answer

Chitapuram N. - "Since there is a need for the data to be accurate and consistent without any latency to allocate a spot, can't the data be synchronously synced to replicas after every write as the number of writes are not many per min, instead of read lock phenomena Let me know if i am on a wrong thought here."See full answer

Rajesh V. - "As a PM i received a feedback from my program manager on my style of verbal communication. It is about me speaking faster when i wanted to get away with a topic that i wasn't confident (may be not backed up with data, or still in process of getting detailed insight of a problem etc.). Whereas when I'm confident I tend to speak slowly or more assertively that made people to follow easily. I welcomed that feedback so from then on when I'm not confident in a topic I became more assertive to let pe"See full answer

Mark G. - "Situation: At my previous company, we had more than 200 different data sources across 15 business units. These included CRM systems, marketing platforms, HR databases, and even third-party data feeds. The problem was that each team was managing data in its own way. This created inconsistent privacy controls, data quality issues, and compliance gaps, all of which were becoming urgent ahead of a major regulatory audit. Task: I was given the responsibility of implementing a unified data governance"See full answer

Daniel P. - "Okay, so I understand the question: "how does Google Maps compute estimated time of arrival"... There are a couple scenarios when ETA is calculated: planning a future journey, planning current journey. Can we assume scope to the current journey? The learnings will likely be transferable. User inputs to ETA include origin, destination, and route chosen. Let's assume first that the user has chosen an origin, destination, and a route chosen. We can come back to these assumptions later. The way I'"See full answer

Pramod V. - "Referring to https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/03/23/15-strategies-for-balancing-competing-stakeholder-priorities/?sh=7c82aa68262f Understand the conflicting priorities and align it with the goal/ objectives and the company mission. Start with the Least Common Denominator between the conflicting priorities to come to a commonality and start from there to objectively approach the next imp priority Always keep communication on and be transparent with 'equality' an"See full answer

Adarsh S. - "Thanks for the question! This is one of my favourite topics because it’s at the core of what we do as PMs DAILY: making the complex simple to drive alignment. I’ve got a structured way to approach this, and I’ll use it to explain payment aggregators - like Plaid - and how they enable Open Banking, with a twist about a technical hiccup I’ve seen in practice. Let’s dive in. I start by assessing the audience. Say I’m talking to a marketing manager at Transak - someone sharp but not techni"See full answer

Namu - "Provided an example from my work history where I asked to move the Go-live date to prevent launch date failure."See full answer

Harshita G. - "Is the "idea" I'm trying to sell something new or built off an existing service/product we offer? Interviewer: Let's assume new. Assuming it's a proper sit-down meeting with senior management to go over the proposal, here is what the slide deck would contain. Introduction/Description of the problem I'm trying to solve: Before proposing a solution, it is important to first identify the problem we're trying to solve. This section would contain the description of the problem/pain poi"See full answer

Shashikant A. - "I followed STAR format"See full answer