Interview Questions

Philip C. - "Initial Assumptions I’m going to assume that this is a blue sky question, and there aren’t any constraints in terms of geo, funding, etc. With that in mind, one deeply unoptimized product is… a parking meter. I’ll assume for the sake of this answer that we’re focusing on parking in an urban environment since that’s where most parking-related friction exists. I’m also going to assume that we’re a startup and don’t have any special strengths/ weaknesses that we need to account for"See full answer

S R. - "Wrote up a simple cache system using python dict. Added TTL requirement. Then went into code-level concurrency issues for the cache."See full answer

David I. - "WITH filtered_posts AS ( SELECT p.user_id, p.issuccessfulpost FROM post p WHERE p.postdate >= '2023-11-01' AND p.postdate < '2023-12-01' ), post_summary AS ( SELECT pu.user_type, COUNT(*) AS post_attempt, SUM(CASE WHEN fp.issuccessfulpost = 1 THEN 1 ELSE 0 END) AS post_success FROM filtered_posts fp JOIN postuser pu ON fp.userid = pu.user_id GROUP BY pu.user_type ) SELECT user_type, post_success, post_attempt, CAST(postsuccess AS FLOAT) / postattempt AS postsuccessrate FROM po"See full answer

Mike Z. - "Clarifying questions Scope: Just Reels in Facebook, or Instagram too? Mobile and desktop? Goal: Any specific goal we know of or up to me to decide? Framework/Overview Strategy Metric options with pros/cons North Star Metric (NSM) Risks & countermetrics Strategy / The Why: we want to give people … Meta: the power to build community + Bring people closer together Reels: new form of self-expression / entertainment with short form video and pro editing tools Ads in Re"See full answer

Devendra B. - "Narrow scope of mission: As a Product Manager for Google Search, my primary mission would be to enhance the search experience for users, ensuring they find the most relevant information quickly and efficiently. This involves continually improving the quality of search results, enhancing the user interface, and exploring innovative features to meet evolving user needs. Customer segments: Google Search caters to a diverse range of users, including students, professionals, researchers, and"See full answer

Hashmina H. - "Clarifying Questions: Do we want to target a particular geography or location or should it be done globally? Assume global Is there any particular platform and device we are targeting (App/web) or should it be cross platforms? Cross platforms Can I think about it as Product led solutions or do you want to consider marketing alternatives as well? Let's start with Product led solutions & later if time permits, we can touch on the marketing side as well Are there any constra"See full answer

Gabe M. - "My stab at this (feedback welcome): Total distance for last car 500 meters: Assuming mostly standard cars, average car length + gap = 5 meters. Acceleration time total 505 seconds: first car reacts slowest, accelerate in 10 seconds. Every other car needs 5 seconds (can see ahead). Takes 90 seconds to cover 500m: to cover 500m that means 90 seconds (20kph = 10km in 30min = 1km in 3min = 500m in 1.5m) A bit under 10 minutes = 90s + 505s. Probably a bit less as last car"See full answer

Will P. - "There are several categories of ads that users may encounter on YouTube content pages, depending on the user's device and browser. To narrow the scope of my answer, I am going to assume this is a non-skippable, midroll video ad that is 15 seconds long, and shown to a non-premium desktop user in the US. The next step is to clarify the motivations behind the proposed feature. Are non-relevant ads harmful to the overall user satisfaction? Do users engage more with relevant ads? Are advertisers mak"See full answer

John H. - "All products and services have to sell. I would create measurements on how much time, labor, and funds went into a project and how much value it brings back to customers and company."See full answer

Harshit G. - "Great question. My favourite product is YouTube Music. Let's see on what its strategy should be for next year. Clarifying questions No clarifying questions on this as I will be working with my favourite products. I will have few assumptions which I will state out before we proceed. Assumptions Assuming that we need to come up with strategy for YouTube Music app - not considering YouTube as a whole as part of this. I am considering overall audio streaming as the space to come up with the s"See full answer

Kartik D. - "Clarifying Questions: What age range are we looking at between 13-19? Any specific range we need to target? - Assume all teens Any demography we would target? - Worldwide Do they have access to phones/laptops or do we need to build an offline product? - Assume they have access to phones and laptops Are there any constraints around privacy or content moderation? - Yes What platform (Facebook core, Messenger, or another product) is this for? - Assume faceb"See full answer

Geetesh T. - "Situation: While in the middle of a migration project, which required rewrite of services of my product into a cloud infra., we needed to configure our rules management services onto cloud as per legacy platform. The data extract of all the rules from legacy platform in a csv file needed heavy formatting to be usable for configuration of the new service. My entire engineering capacity was allocated on other prioritized ongoing feature migration and I had no bandwidth left in the ongoing spri"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

Neeraj K. - "Clarify 10X -> usage or revenue Approach What is Msft Copilot & key capabilities Understand the space in which Copilot operates : Target segments & use-cases serve Competitors (alternatives) Leverage microsoft has : Understand the stack (infra -> application layer) -> leverage Understand Microsoft ecosystem & leverage we have Define : 10X growth strategy (for whom -> & what? -> distribution (acquire & retain)) MSft Copilot & key capabilities Cons"See full answer

Vivan B. - "Feedback would much appreciated as I have not practiced many product strategy questions Clarifying questions Can we assume this is the first time Google has entered the elevator market? Or are there prior elevators to this one? Let's assume first time Is this a large elevator for industrial use like heavy goods/freight etc. or is it an elevator for apartment blocks and commercial premises? Let's assume passenger elevator Is there a geography for this launch? Let's assume the US"See full answer

Kartikeya N. - "Clarifying questions: Can I assume the timeframe to be today, ie Dec 2024? : Yes What country are we targeting? Lets say it is India. When we say "Use google search to find a new job" do we mean to say that they use Google search in their job search process or also convert and actually find a job? : The former. I am assuming we are only considering when someone directly searches jobs on Google and not searches for some job search portal on google: Yes. How long should the search"See full answer