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

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

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 · Answer

* 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

Anonymous · Answer

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 · Answer

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 · Answer

While working on a navigation redesign project, my team and I found that a
colleague on another team (a GTM person) was very unhappy about the redesign
project. There was a lot of chatter that she was unhappy and had spoken with
leadership about her misgivings, but exactly what was bothering her was unclear.

The designer on my team and I decided to set up a 1:1 meeting with this
colleague in order to understand exactly what the issues were. We learned that
her team was in the middle of rebranding their product and she was worried that
the launch of the redesign would undermine the rebrand effort.

We assured our colleague that the launch of the redesigned navigation would not
happen for a few months, still, long after their rebrand and the buzz around it
would have settled. With that assurance, she was no longer anxious about the
redesign project, and we were able to move on with the work.

Simply having a conversation, understanding what the issues were, and coming up
with a resolution was all it took.

Anonymous · Answer

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 · Answer

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 · Answer

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 · Answer

As manager of a team I was confronted with a disagreement about how to implement
a feature, one side wanted to make it in a certain way while another wanted
differently. I had to step in to make the decision for them which then created
disappointment with the ones who didn't get their way. I had to resolve by
reminding them of my authority as well as the overall goal which has more
importance than getting your way.

Anonymous · Answer

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

Nikhil · Answer

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

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