The engineering VP round is the most irritating one for me. Especially when they ask you to design a new product - they try to enforce a solution without understanding product thinking / user needs/ monetization. How do you manage these rounds?
In my opinion questions like this are loaded and not indicative of a person’s capability but should tell you a lot about the interviewing company/team’s culture. If someone asks that question and is expecting a certain answer then it means they are not interested in breaking the status quo. If the answers don’t match they wouldn’t know the right answer unless they would have thought of that or tried that solution. This is different from technical questions because for those at least there are known solutions and solution paths.
I think the problem is that they(EM VPs) are time pressed and don't enjoy the process of arriving at the solution. I did not face this problem with the PM org. Fundamental question is why is an EM asking a "design a product" question? Aren't they supposed to understand the technical depth etc?
Sounds like a great question to filter out employers. If they don't want to reasonably consider the customer, business, market, then that's a red flag for me.
Take a few assumptions to make the problem simple and be transparent about the assumptions you are considering. This will give interviewer insight into your thinking and to change your assumptions as required.
Engineers love to solve problems thats their job. As a PM the biggest skill is to be able to negotiate and show/tell them why it's beyond that. If you find that irritating then u'll have a hard time once u have the job
I do that everyday. Problem is when an EM interviews a PM they try to go to a solution without thinking of the customer needs. I was just wondering what's the use of these kind of interviews.
That's the whole point if the interview - you should figure out the unknowns in the conversation
Dude, read the topic again. You don't have to figure out any unknowns.
The unknowns are (1) who wants to be in charge, (2) what are they saying they want, and (3) what do they really want? Many engineers in my experience simply want to know that you will include them in the discussion, that you will respect the tech side, and that you will take them to school on what needs to be done and why.