Recently interviewed for a startup and one of the first questions is “Create an org chart and prioritize who I would layoff”. This is an IC role and not for a managerial position
I would be creating an org chart and laying off PMs and clueless middle management
I was interviewing for a PM role lol And I posted this in the PM group
🤣 lol
Org chart would be 1. Hashmap of every employee to their manager 2. Hashmap of every manager to list of reportees. For layoff, make a class of employee and metrics, and min heap of the above class objects based on performance metrics (custom comparator). Make pointers from hashmap to this heap (and reverse) as per specific use cases.
Identify North Star metric and its drivers. For each main driver you can have a pod in your org chart like one each for acquisition, engagement, retention and monetisation. Depending on the business priority at a particular time, you can prioritise which pod you’d be okay letting go for the short term.
Not that weird of a question. I’ve had this asked after the what’s your favorite product question. Ie, “Imagine you’re the CPO, how would you structure the product team?” Then, “Now you’re forced to downsize, where would you make cuts and why?” They’re trying to see how well you know the product, how you think about the product, and then how you prioritize. You might pull resources from a part of the product that is super mature and double down on a differentiator, for example. It’s another one of those you done have to be right, just need to have a thought process and justify it.
IMO they are expecting you to not have any middle management layer in the org chart after top management to keep it lean and set your expectations for the future. Maybe in the process they want middle management to be laid off as well.
But the question was asked by a middle manager