Tell us about a time you went against the grain with your decision.

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

As we approached RTL freeze, there were many pending deliverables along with
ongoing regression debugging. I proposed a prioritization strategy to focus on
new feature failures in regressions over legacy issues, as the legacy features
had already been silicon-proven in previous tapeouts without reported bugs. My
goal was to optimize debugging efforts and ensure that critical new
functionality was verified before the RTL freeze deadline. I proposed that we
focus first      on new feature regressions, since legacy features had already
been running in      production.
 * However, my proposal wasn’t      well received because stakeholders felt that
   untested scenarios could      still expose latent bugs in legacy features,
   making it risky to de-prioritize      them.
 * Instead of pushing my      approach, I collaborated with cross-functional
   teams to gather data on      which legacy features had already been verified
   by other teams (such as validation or      software teams).
 * Using this data, I presented      a compromise      strategy:
   * Features already tested by       other teams were lowered in priority.
   * Unverified legacy features       remained in scope alongside new feature
     debugging.
   * This data-backed      compromise was accepted by management, ensuring new
     feature verification remained a      priority while      addressing
     concerns about legacy coverage.
 * We met the RTL freeze      deadline without      compromising verification
   quality.
 * This experience strengthened      my ability to handle pushback
   constructively and use data-driven      reasoning to drive alignment across
   teams.

Anonymous · Answer

I had proposed a strategy where we were approaching RTL freeze and we had a lot
of deliverables still pending along with regression debugs. I proposed that we
need to identify the key new features in the regression failures vs legacy
features and spend time verifying and getting those resolved before RTL freeze
deadline and then go back to working on legacy enhancements/debugs. The strategy
was we already did tapeout and the product is being run for a while and we've
not heard of any bugs. However, this wasn't accepted since the thought was may
be all scenarios are not run and getting hit. So, we can't rely on what's being
run. End of the day in this situation, i had to work with other cross functional
teams to find a optimal middle ground where if some of those features were
verified by other teams then we could lower the priority and i presented those
facts with more data for the management to accept.

Anonymous · Answer

I had proposed a strategy where we were approaching RTL freeze and we had a lot
of deliverables still pending along with regression debugs. I proposed that we
need to identify the key new features in the regression failures vs legacy
features and spend time verifying and getting those resolved before RTL freeze
deadline and then go back to working on legacy enhancements/debugs. The strategy
was we already did tapeout and the product is being run for a while and we've
not heard of any bugs. However, this wasn't accepted since the thought was may
be all scenarios are not run and getting hit. So, we can't rely on what's being
run. End of the day in this situation, i had to work with other cross functional
teams to find a optimal middle ground where if some of those features were
verified by other teams then we could lower the priority and i presented those
facts with more data for the management to accept.

Tell us about a time you went against the grain with your decision.

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