Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

It was when we were preparing data for warranty negotiation, my boss asked me to
prepare data past 3 years back but I didn’t agree because data should be data to
be used since last negotiation on 2018.
I told my boss about history of this topic and told her that the more sample we
had, the more   opportunity to win negotiation.
then I prepared 2018-2024 data and reviewed together, we found that by comparing
data between 2020-2024 and 2018-2024, warranty responsibility is much lower. We
both agreed to use 2018-2024 data for negotiation and the result as we expected,
we got the ratio as we proposed.

Anonymous · Answer

i always  remain calm, however in my last project i have given the methodology
that were not useful for customer needs. i accepted but it didn't work until i
had deep down discussion with my line manager and suggest the best way to  dealt
with the situation, i defended my case proffesional and with evidences, and got
accepted.

Anonymous · Answer

There was a time when I disagreed with my boss about the prioritization of
resources for two competing product launches - one for an assay and the other
for a software application. My boss wanted to focus all efforts on the software,
but I believed that both products had significant market potential and needed a
more balanced approach. While I understood the importance of maintaining focus,
I felt each product targeted a distinct customer base and could drive growth in
different ways.

The challenge in this situation was that my boss had a clear vision for the
software’s potential, and there was resistance to the idea of spreading
resources thinner by dividing focus. Additionally, gathering data to support my
perspective was complex. I had to collect insights from multiple teams,
including R&D and sales, and incorporate customer feedback from different
segments. Aligning everyone on the market demand for both products and
forecasting their potential impact took time and effort.

Despite these challenges, I initiated a discussion with my boss, presenting a
detailed, data-driven analysis. I included market research, revenue projections,
and customer feedback that highlighted the opportunities for both products. I
also proposed a phased approach where we would prioritize the software launch
first, but ensure that the assay received sufficient attention and resources
shortly after.
Initially, there was hesitation, especially from the sales team who was
concerned about balancing their efforts. But after further discussion and
reviewing the data together, my boss agreed to a modified strategy that allowed
us to effectively allocate resources for both launches. The result was a 20%
increase in capital equipment sales in the first year due to the software, and a
25% adoption rate for the assay when bundled with the software.

This experience reinforced the importance of resilience in facing resistance,
being persistent in gathering relevant data, and effectively communicating the
value of a balanced, customer-focused approach to decision-making.

Anonymous · Answer

I was working on a high stake project with very high visibility from my senior
management.
Me and my manager were thinking of can we leverage the quality of the
development using help from QA team. He wanted to keep the QA team separate. His
point of view was that a separate team would keep clear focus for the team and
they would focus on finding more customer facing bugs. I thought that we should
have QA embedded in the scrum team as that would help in easier collaboration
and quicker bug fixes plus this is a more efficient way. Though I understood his
point of view I always believed that in QA embedded inside the scrum team. I
went back had a thought to measure the merits and demerits of the proposals. I
put down in a slide the merits and demerits of each. Merit from having a
separate team, clear focus and better filtering of quality, demerits less
collaboration with development team. I then proposed that the QA engineers
attend the calls of dev teams but keep a separate QA board for their tasks. This
will give clarity of what bugs they find, what test scenarios they create and
finally the metrics to measure the bugs reported per development. My boss and I
both agreed as it solved the problems of each proposals

Anonymous · Answer

On a high-stakes project aimed at providing a comprehensive data view of our
consumers, I was leading the team towards a tight deadline when a significant
conflict arose. The product manager requested an additional feature that would
allow external clients to access our services, just as we were about to ship the
software. This posed risks of delays and security vulnerabilities. Understanding
the importance of the project timeline and the associated risks, I took the
initiative to resolve the conflict. I arranged a meeting with the product
manager and other key stakeholders to discuss the situation. During the meeting,
I presented a document listing all potential risks and communicated my concerns,
focusing on the delay and security implications of the new feature. I also
listened attentively to the product manager's perspective, who insisted on the
feature for its potential to increase revenue. To address the conflict, I
proposed a two-phase approach: first, we would launch the software for internal
clients as planned, and second, we would develop the additional feature for
external clients, ensuring all security concerns were addressed. This plan was
accepted by all stakeholders, allowing us to meet the original deadline and
later implement the new feature without compromising the project's integrity.
The experience underscored the value of open communication, collaboration, and
strategic problem-solving in conflict resolution.

Anonymous · Answer

After releasing and announcing the software supply chain security compliance for
Dart & Flutter my boss called me to a meeting to discuss re-purposing the
security team resources to work on testing. I share that security was a very
important area for the community and users and I also shared my concerns that
stopping the security work would impact ongoing projects with the Flutter
internal releases.
The meeting then moved to negotiating what parts of the security program would
need to continue and how to reprioritize the resources to also work in testing.
The outcome of the meeting was to keep the security operations and move half of
the security resources to work on testing.
Even when I disagreed with the decision to eliminate the security team I managed
to negotiate keeping the most important parts of the security program and at the
same time comply with the decision and moving some of the resources to work on
testing.

Anonymous · Answer

While working at a startup this summer, my boss and the CEO was very excited to
rapidly deploy an new AI model that was capable of remixing songs to the
website. However, me and the other main engineer believed that we would need
some more time to continue working on the model, as we wanted to be very
thorough with our testing of it before it was deployed to users. To discuss this
discrepancy in timelines, I scheduled a meeting between the CEO and engineering
team and discussed the various components and deliverables that needed to be
done before the model could be deployed, and the timeline associated with each
of these items. Specifically, I presented how the labeling and cleaning of data
as well as time required to train the model served as major bottlenecks that
required multiple iterations of work. I was definitely a little apprehensive
about how he would take the news that the model deployment would have to be
slightly delayed, but after speaking with the rest of the engineering team, we
thought it would be the best course of action to ensure the product remained
high quality. Breaking down each of the components specifically was very helpful
for the CEO to understand what work was being done to create the model, and it
helped to realign us as we pushed onwards.

Anonymous · Answer

At Auctane, while my team was in the middle of the rewrite - for refund module,
The PMs wanted a new feature to the legacy system, I pushed back on the switch
as it would cause a lot of churn for my team. PM got my Manager involved and
convinced that this was a good idea to release new feature on monolith. My
manager aggreed for this swap, I was disaggreed with this decision but commited
to the change in direction.
I breifed my team with this change, and we could accomate the feature request
after negotiating the scope of the microsystem re-write.

Anonymous · Answer

i haven’ encountered a situation like this.However if I found some idea wrong I
will challenge it with respect and professionalis,If i were to face this
situation in future my approach would be open communication and understanging
each other perspectives and discussing potential solution to find common grounds
through which we can move towards a unified direction

Tell me about a time when you disagreed with your boss

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