Behavioral

Tell us about a time when you had to deal with conflict

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Answers

Anonymous

4Strong
In a recent project, I led a collaborative effort with a remote development team based in another country. We encountered a disagreement about the coding standards used by our respective teams. The other senior engineer on the project preferred their team's existing standards, while I believed aligning with our project's coding standards would improve consistency and ease collaboration across both teams. To resolve the disagreement, I scheduled a meeting with both teams to discuss the situation and understand the reasoning behind each team's preferred approach. During the meeting, I emphasized the importance of standards for maintaining code quality and readability throughout the project. We collaboratively reviewed both sets of standards and merged the best practices from each to create a unified set of coding guidelines for the project. This process involved actively listening to the other engineer's perspective and respectful dialogue between the teams. By reaching a consensus on the unified standards, we were able to enhance collaboration and improve code quality across the entire project. This experience highlighted the significance of effective communication while working with remote teams and managing cross-cultural differences

Anonymous

3.8Strong
  • Situation: The client had migrated from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365. My colleague and I were tasked to work on developing a Microsoft 365 training guide for the employees
  • We realized we have different visions and ideas
  • I want something interactive like adding video contents
  • She want to create like a powerpoint manual
  • Task: We couldn’t come to a solution, i saw that tension is building up
  • I took a step back, and asked my coworker on why she doesn’t like my idea
  • She said that she can’t learn well through interactive videos
  • realized that our conflict stemmed from different learning styles
  • To address the conflict, I proposed to combine our ideas to create a more comprehensive training resource
  • Set up meeting to discuss how we can add our parts  into the final product
  • Result: We successfully publish the training guide for employees w diff learning styles
  • Learned: I learned the importance of acknowledging and addressing these differences early in the process. Also accommodating diverse perspectives
Expert Answer

Anonymous

4.2Exceptional
While working on a data backfilling system with a teammate, we encountered a difference in our approach to implementation. My teammate suggested using heavy Ruby metaprogramming, which could create highly flexible but complex code. I, on the other hand, leaned toward a simpler, modular design, applying select design patterns. I believed this would make the code easier to maintain, especially for future developers unfamiliar with metaprogramming techniques.
Recognizing the potential for conflict, I arranged a meeting to discuss our perspectives in depth. Beforehand, I thoroughly evaluated both options. I considered how metaprogramming could provide flexibility and potentially reduce initial lines of code. However, I also weighed the downsides: added complexity, a steeper learning curve, and potential debugging challenges for future maintainers.
In our meeting, I shared my analysis, focusing on the value of simplicity in a codebase intended for long-term use. I explained that a modular approach would make debugging and future enhancements more straightforward, ensuring that new team members could easily onboard without spending extra time deciphering complex code structures. After our discussion, my teammate agreed to take the simpler, modular approach, and we moved forward with a clear, cohesive direction.

Anonymous

4Strong
In a recent project, I led a collaborative effort with a remote development team based in another country.
 We encountered a disagreement about the coding standards used by our respective teams. The other senior engineer on the project preferred their team's existing standards, while I believed aligning with our project's coding standards would improve consistency and ease collaboration across both teams. To resolve the disagreement, I scheduled a meeting with both teams to discuss the situation and understand the reasoning behind each team's preferred approach. During the meeting, I emphasized the importance of standards for maintaining code quality and readability throughout the project. We collaboratively reviewed both sets of standards and merged the best practices from each to create a unified set of coding guidelines for the project. This process involved actively listening to the other engineer's perspective and respectful dialogue between the teams. By reaching a consensus on the unified standards, we were able to enhance collaboration and improve code quality across the entire project. This experience highlighted the significance of effective communication while working with remote teams and managing cross-cultural differences

Anonymous

3.6Strong
In my current role, there was a time when operation and engineering team was not aligned which was causing lots of delays during deployment. as per operation team build should be deployed in same branch which was available on pre-prod but as we were running multiple projects/features parallelly. it was difficult to develop and test everything in one branch and made it ready for deployment in a short time.

I had to work with my team (engineering team) and operational team to come up with a solution where we both are aligned and can reduce delivery time as well.

Initially i had proposed a solution when we were developing and testing work on feature branch and once its fully tested by QA on feature branch we push all changes to staging branch where we can do final testing. for some time this approach worked but we start facing new issue which is related to code merge as after merge features were impacting each other and require additional time to fix those issues and make it ready within planned time.

We added one more process if features/fixes are small and won't impact much then we merge else we try to plan deployment sequentially to avoid any further delay. 

This approach helped team to deliver project/feature on time and operational team was happy as they don't need to keep track of multiple branches during deployment.



 

Anonymous

3.6Strong
My philiosphy with conflicts are they are inevitable and it can be a good thing - because new ideas can come out of it. At XYZ, Dev Ops team is responsible for creating teraform scripts to deploy to AWS both on Test and Prod env. Few cloud eng left the company - and it started to impact our sprint cadence. Initially I approached the Director of Cloud Eng to see how we can unblock my team, in that meeting I proposed may be one of the resource can help their team come up with the TerraFarm script. After talking to other eng. teams I found that this was an issue with their cadance as well. I collobrated with my peers to come up with a proposal - i.e there will be a resource on each team - who will co-own the terra farm scripts. This would do things for us :
a) Reduce the backlog on cloud eng team and allow the teams move faster
b) GIve me time for cloud eng team to find the right fit.
Initially the manager was releuctant but aggreed to try out, after 2 sprints the backlog was reduced and we could more much faster. The lesson I learnt is - first find out all the solution we can have, then anticipate what kind of question they might have? Collobration is key in such instances. 

Anonymous

3.4Strong
When I was working as a UX designer at Motorola in 2021, I dealt with conflict between design leadership and product. The conflict arised due to competing priorities. As a user Advocate, I took charge to collect data to help resolve the conflict one way or the other. so I conducted usability audit to prove that there were major usability issues and thus would lead to bad experience for customers if we don’t prioritise those in product roadmaplz after seeing the data the product stakoh were convinced and agreed to add those in roadmap.

Anonymous

2.5Fair
I audit the supplier in the workbook. 
The pic of the supplier link me to another personnel, and during the audit I just realised the factory is not belong to my direct supplier. It is the supplier own supplier and My company shall not audit my supplier own supplier. I have to continue the audit. When the audit finish, I wrote email to my superior and GCm regarding the finding, and need GCM help to confirm the factory that I audit is correct.  Through multiple email, the supplier was then admitted the factory I audit and the supplier company are 2 different entities and according to my company policy, we shall not audit the supplier's supplier. Then Supplier send us another company name, which is also different entities and let us decide whether need to audit. The GCm is emotional and made decision of requesting to perform the audit. I question GCm for his request and he is emotionally and unprofessional. I have to send email professional to reject the audit request with explanation and said audit will be conducted uf requested by management in future. 

T
II

Anonymous

We were working in a project where stakeholder uses third party api for route optimization of the field service agents. We were trying to build a in house solution using open source tools while some stakeholders were supporting some are really spectacle that we should keep going to use third party api. To tackle the situation  in the first iteration we build a basic product that show the comparison of routes actually and using our product it shows how the coverage of work orders increased and generate value in this way we receive a better stakeholders support

  • Tell us about a time when you had to deal with conflict
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  • Describe a scenario where you faced a conflict and how you handled it.
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  • Tell me about a specific instance where you had to address a conflict.
  • Could you walk me through a time when you had to handle a conflict?
  • Have you ever found yourself in a conflict? How did you approach it?
  • Share a time when you had to resolve a conflict.
  • Can you provide an example of a time when you had to navigate a conflict?
  • Describe a situation where you had to work through a disagreement or conflict with someone.
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Interview question asked to Full Stack Software Engineers, Technical Program Managers, iOS Engineers and other roles interviewing at Nokia, Salesforce, Figma and others: Tell us about a time when you had to deal with conflict.