People Management

Can you describe the importance of continuous learning and professional development in the field of engineering?

Engineering Manager

Spotify

DoorDash

Activision Blizzard

MyGlamm

GoCardless

Bill.com

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Answers

Anonymous

7 months ago
4Strong
Yes I am a big advocate of continuous learning and professional development. When I joined by current team I saw a lot of great work done within my team and org but people usually worked in silos. There were handful of senior engineers and PEs who had a plethora of knowledge but that was not getting properly channelled down mid/junior employees. I decided to start a brown bag series every other week in the org where we will have someone sign up to share what they are working on the team. We kept the talks to be informal so that there was not a lot of obligation for people to create formal slides. They were free to have a talk, reuse a document/slide they created, or just open a code block and discuss. Worked with senior engineers/PEs in the org to drive first few sessions start sharing their knowledge accross the team. Eventually started encouraging the mid/junior level engineers to also present their work and slowly people started to come up with topics of their own. Also started inviting partner teams to talk about adjecent things and also PMs providing business impact of the work the team is doing and roadmap. The team really looks forward to this series now.

Anonymous

7 months ago
4Strong
Continuous learning is essential to keep oneself up to date with industry standards. It will help individuals delve into the problems in a more robust way. For example, to connect the data and provide a 360 degree perspective to a subject, it would be great to have an in-depth understanding of different database technologies to decide which one can solve the problem more efficiently. Another eg. would be when to use REST vs GRPC Vs GraphQL. It's not mandatory to keep changing the tech but if one is invested in learning and knowing about things for how they work and what they can solve new opportunities and discoveries could be made.

Anonymous

a year ago
2.4Fair
I did this with in our project when client requested to improve the overall site performance. As a solution, I led the team to acquire new technologies which accomplish this task.
  • Can you describe the importance of continuous learning and professional development in the field of engineering?
  • How do you encourage continuous learning and professional development for your team?
  • How do you encourage your team members to pursue professional development opportunities?
  • Can you give an example of a professional development program or initiative that you have implemented for your team?
  • What are the approaches you take to encourage your team to keep learning?
  • How do you help your reports optimize towards their learning outcomes?
  • How do you balance your reports' needs to learn and grow professionally alongside product delivery?
  • Have you ever faced resistance from your team when it comes to learning new things? If so, how did you address it?
  • Can you tell me about a time when you had to motivate your team to learn new skills?
  • What strategies do you use to ensure that your team is always up-to-date with the latest industry trends?
  • What resources have you found most helpful when it comes to facilitating learning and development opportunities for your team?
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Interview question asked to Engineering Managers interviewing at Blizzard, App Annie, Fortinet and others: Can you describe the importance of continuous learning and professional development in the field of engineering?.