Tell me about a time when you showed ownership

Question

Prakash · Accepted Answer

There was a situation last year when designing search functionality with in user
messages was required, a staff engineer came up with an idea that pretty much
requires writing from scratch using a trie + cache approach. I told him that we
should rather use elastic search. I then explained to him that while his
approach was innovative, it would require a significant amount of time and
resources to implement. On the other hand, using elastic search, a proven
technology, would allow us to achieve the same results more efficiently and with
less risk. He was able to understand the bigger picture and eventually updated
the design.

Anonymous · Answer

We were in the midst of integrating a payment gateway, escrow account, and split
payout system for our new Marketplace for homeowners. This integration was
crucial for facilitating seamless transactions between buyers and sellers on the
platform.

**The Challenge:**
Just as we were nearing the completion of our integration with our chosen
financial partner, we discovered a major compliance issue that made it
impossible to continue with this partner. This was a critical setback as we had
already committed release dates to our stakeholders and the launch was highly
anticipated.

**Taking Ownership:**
Recognizing the urgency and critical nature of this issue, I took full ownership
to resolve it swiftly and effectively. Here’s how I approached it:

1. **Initiating Discussions with Alternative Partners:**
   - I immediately initiated discussions with alternative financial partners to
find a suitable replacement. My goal was to identify a partner who could meet
our compliance requirements and integrate smoothly with our existing system.
   - I leveraged my network and industry contacts to expedite the evaluation
process and set up meetings with potential partners.

2. **Looping in the Engineering Team:**
   - From the beginning, I involved our engineering team in discussions with the
new potential partners. This ensured that the technical feasibility and
integration requirements were clear and that we could maximize the reuse of
existing work.
   - I facilitated technical deep-dive sessions to assess compatibility and
identify areas where we could leverage previous integration efforts.

3. **Strategic Planning and Execution:**
   - I developed a detailed action plan that prioritized speed and efficiency.
We set clear goals to reuse as much of the existing integration code and
processes as possible to minimize rework.
   - I established a clear timeline and milestones, ensuring that all team
members were aligned and understood the urgency.

4. **Maximizing Team Effort:**
   - I motivated the team by emphasizing the importance of meeting our committed
launch dates. Everyone understood the critical nature of the project, and the
entire team was prepared to give their 200%.
   - I facilitated daily stand-ups and regular progress reviews to keep the team
focused and address any issues promptly.

5. **Ensuring Compliance and Quality:**
   - We worked closely with the new financial partner to ensure that all
compliance requirements were met and that the integration was secure and
reliable.
   - Extensive testing was conducted to validate the integration and ensure a
smooth user experience upon launch.

**Outcome:**
Thanks to the team's dedication and the strategic approach, we successfully
integrated with the new financial partner and launched the payment gateway,
escrow account, and split payout system within two months. This was a
significant achievement given the initial setback and tight timeline.

**Reflection:**
This experience reinforced the importance of taking ownership and being
proactive in resolving critical issues. By demonstrating leadership, fostering
collaboration, and maintaining clear communication, I was able to drive the
project to successful completion despite the challenges. This project not only
contributed significantly to the company’s revenue growth but also reinforced
our commitment to delivering reliable and efficient services.

This example highlights my ability to take full ownership of a critical project,
navigate through significant challenges, and lead a cross-functional team to
achieve strategic business goals.

Anonymous · Answer

Situation:
At TinyEYE Therapy Services, I was leading the development of a new feature
called Smart Note Generation. This feature was designed to take session
transcriptions and use GPT technology to automatically summarize the session,
making it easier for therapists to complete their session notes. However, there
was significant resistance from the therapy team, who were concerned about the
accuracy of AI-generated summaries and the potential for technology to replace
their clinical judgment.
Task:
My task was to decide whether to move forward with the implementation of this
feature, knowing it could greatly reduce the time therapists spent on
administrative tasks but also understanding the concerns about its reliability
and impact on their workflow.
Action:
After weighing the pros and cons, I decided to proceed with the Smart Note
Generation feature. To address the team’s concerns, I initiated a pilot program
where a small group of therapists would test the feature. I worked closely with
them to gather feedback, iteratively improving the accuracy of the AI summaries
based on their input. I also emphasized that the feature was designed to assist,
not replace, their professional judgment, and they would always have the final
say in the content of the notes.
Result:
Initially, the decision to implement the Smart Note Generation feature was met
with skepticism and reluctance. However, as the pilot program progressed, the
therapists involved began to see the value in the feature. They reported that
the AI summaries were saving them significant time, allowing them to focus more
on direct patient care. Eventually, the feature was rolled out to the entire
team, leading to a 40% reduction in time spent on session documentation and
improving overall therapist satisfaction. What started as an unpopular decision
became a widely appreciated tool that enhanced the efficiency and effectiveness
of the team’s work.

Anonymous · Answer

When I joined Mobisy Technologies, I inherited a client account that was almost
terminated due to unmet development commitments over the past three months.
Before my involvement, 60% of their project was completed, but the remaining 40%
had been neglected because there was no designated point of contact. The
previous responsible person had left, and there had been no regular client
meetings, only monthly follow-ups from my manager.
The client was frustrated by the lack of progress and communication, so they
escalated their concerns to our senior stakeholders. To fix things, I started by
listening carefully to what they were upset about. I made sure they knew I
understood their frustrations and wanted to make things right.
I developed a clear action plan. I worked closely with our engineering team to
assess the backlog, identify critical bottlenecks and prioritize tasks based on
their impact. I used project tracking tool Jira to streamline workflow. This
allowed us to maintain transparency and keep all stakeholders. I Implemented a
live project tracker for the client to share regular progress and kept the
client informed at every stage.
Simultaneously, I engaged directly with senior stakeholders on the client side.
I provided detailed updates on our progress and demonstrated our commitment to
addressing their concerns promptly. I also created a performance dashboard that
highlighted our improvements, showing measurable increases in project completion
rates.
These efforts not only retained the client but also expanded our engagement. The
client appreciated our dedication to resolving issues and recognized our
commitment to their success. After six months, they initiated project from
another division, worth $110K.
This experience taught me the importance of proactive communication,
problem-solving, and using tools like to streamline operations and ensure client
satisfaction.

Ying-An · Answer

ADM had no user researcher in the past and I got pulled into a adoption email
campaign and helped boosted the adoption. But in the study i found there's a
perceived value gap so I initiated further collaboration after the adoption
campaign to ensure the perceived value is delivered in ADM. I did survey and
interviews to find main pain points inside ADM, and came up with the uber
dashboard idea to resolve the messy alerting system by task driven widgets on
the dashboard based on the feedback. Even though I wasn't the assigned
researcher and no one support that product, I took it and own it and ADM had the
best customer review after the big changes based on my research

Anonymous · Answer

At my current job one of our biggest customer raised the  issue they were facing
in our notification service. The issue was they were not receiving any
notifications from our system on their new infrastructure. Their production
infra was working fine.
I reviewed their configuration and everything was looking fine at the same time
we hadn't done any changes to on our end which could cause this issue. Since
their contract was up for renewal the issue, we needed quick resolution. I setup
a live debugging session with customer to understand the issue in detail and
their new infrastructure. After the first call it was clear that the issue was
happening during https handshake or at network layer. To keep the momentum going
I setup recurring call with with them and assured them that we are treating this
as a high priority. On the next call I involved our security expert and SRE team
for further debugging. However the issue not futher progress was made, at this
point I insisted SRE team that we contact Azure support to understand if there
is any issue at the tcp layer. Azure team looked at the turned on debug logs and
found that our network was default MTU (maximum transmission unit) was higher
than customers network MTU and customer network was dropping packets.
Finally I worked with SRE team to lower our MTU to match the customer
configuration and ran tests. After the config change issue was resolved, our
customer confirmed that they could see the notifications. This was really
difficult issue I had ran across but I worked with various teams to get to the
bottom of it and delivered results to customers satisfaction.

Anonymous · Answer

I was working on a task with MIT University program team where they used to
share CEU Document to the learner and this process was manual. PMs were manually
creating the document for each learner and sharing it with them on their
registered email id which was a a tedious process. On an average there were
50-60 learners in a batch and each document creation to sharing took at least 20
mins for one PM.
I took the ownership to automate this process where the learners would complete
there program and automatically get the CEU Document just when their
certificates were published. The timeline to do this task was 2 months.
I gathered all the information from the team where I got the assets like logo,
signatures, details of the signatory, the copy of the document, the timeline of
the program start and completion etc.
When the development started I did rigorous testing of the feature checking all
the possible scenarios where this could break and launched the feature in
exactly 2 months where the next document was going to be published in another
month.
Through this feature I saved approx 100 hrs per PM

Anonymous · Answer

At a previous job I was given the task of creating SQL queries based on user
requests for data. Request needed to be formatted in a very specific way in
order to work with our system, they had to be written in Python fitting a very
specific structure for our system. What I did was I wrote a program in
javascript which would take The user request you could just copy the user
request wholesale, paste it into this program, and it would auto format their
request as proper code for our system. You could then just run the code directly
without having to do all of the formatting yourself. This made the task take
much less time to do. I had not been asked to write this program. I saw an
opportunity where the process could be improved and streamlined and decided to
take it and wrote it myself over the course of a few weeks.

Anonymous · Answer

In ISB Games 2023, I served as the Administrative Leader, responsible for
overseeing all administrative tasks across pre-event, in-event, and post-event
phases. My role included managing registrations, check-ins, student experience,
and first-aid assistance, among other tasks. One key responsibility was risk
management, where I developed strategies to address potential risks.
For example, I analyzed participation data from the previous year to determine
drop rates for each sport, identifying those with the highest dropout rates.
From these insights, I reviewed past feedback, examining factors like venue
suitability, event timing, and participant experience, to hypothesize potential
issues. I then assigned risk levels and proposed solutions to mitigate each
identified risk. This groundwork was essential in guiding my team’s preparations
for this year’s ISB Games.

Anonymous · Answer

In a recent project at my current company, PLM decided to go woth full fledge
featurex, due to business requirements, in a single release which in a was
overcommited given the capacity of the engineering team. But I took this as a
challenge charted out the code completion, in-scrum testing, and PV testing
forecast dates by working with different stakeholders involved. I also ensured
that everyone involved has all the clarity for the requirements and scope, to
avoid/minimize any reworks as the deadline was quite aggressive. Everone started
working as per the sprint plan and i followed up about the progress in every
checkpoint and standup meetings.

Anonymous · Answer

As I am lead I always take ownership of the tasks which are assigned by my
higher managers. But I would like to highlight one incident which got me
appreciation directly from the client. We had a project to integrate SSO with
the client and the merchant applications and during that time my manager was on
long leave and I took the responsibilities of the task and successfully launched
it and we were the first team who achieve it first.

Anonymous · Answer

Ownership can be demonstrated in various settings, such as in a professional
environment where one is responsible for specific tasks or projects'.

Shashwat · Answer

* Situation: In my role as a data engineer at [Healthcare Company], I was
   responsible for managing the data infrastructure for a critical healthcare
   analytics project. The project aimed to develop predictive models for
   identifying at-risk patients and improving care outcomes.
 * Task: During one phase of the project, we encountered a significant challenge
   with the data ingestion process. The data sources were diverse and often
   inconsistent, leading to delays and inaccuracies in our analytics.
   Recognizing the urgency of the situation, I took ownership of resolving this
   issue to ensure the project stayed on track and met its objectives.
 * Action: First, I conducted a thorough analysis of the data sources and
   identified discrepancies and inconsistencies that were causing the ingestion
   problems. I then collaborated closely with the data acquisition team and
   domain experts to develop data validation scripts and standardized data
   formats to address these issues at the source.

Next, I redesigned the data ingestion pipeline to incorporate robust error
handling mechanisms and automated data quality checks. This involved writing
custom scripts and configuring monitoring alerts to detect anomalies and ensure
data integrity throughout the ingestion process.
Additionally, I took the initiative to document the entire data ingestion
workflow, including troubleshooting procedures and escalation paths, to
facilitate knowledge sharing and ensure continuity in case of future issues.
 * Result: As a result of my proactive approach and ownership mentality, we were
   able to resolve the data ingestion issues promptly and improve the overall
   reliability and efficiency of the analytics project. The redesigned pipeline
   reduced data processing errors and improved the accuracy of our predictive
   models, leading to more actionable insights for healthcare providers.

Furthermore, my documentation efforts ensured that team members had clear
guidance on how to address similar issues in the future, enabling smoother
operations and reducing downtime.
 * Impact: By taking ownership of the data ingestion challenge and driving the
   resolution process, I demonstrated my commitment to the success of the
   project and my ability to proactively identify and address issues to ensure
   project objectives are met. My actions helped maintain project momentum,
   instilled confidence among stakeholders, and ultimately contributed to the
   project's success in improving healthcare outcomes.

Tell me about a time when you showed ownership

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