October 16, 2025 • 45 mins
Summary
In this episode, the panel discusses the evolving landscape of interviews for Technical Program Managers (TPMs), particularly in light of recent changes due to COVID-19 and the rise of AI. They explore the importance of storytelling in interviews, the use of AI for preparation, and the significance of maintaining an achievement log. The conversation also touches on the differences in interview expectations between large and small companies, the balance of technical depth versus breadth, and strategies for demonstrating stakeholder management skills. The panel concludes with advice for candidates on how to navigate the interview process effectively.
Keywords
Keywords
TPM, interview process, AI in interviews, stakeholder management, technical program manager, COVID impact, achievement log, hybrid work, interview preparation, career advice
Chapters
00:00 Navigating the Evolving Job Market
01:36 The Anatomy of TPM Interviews
04:33 The Impact of AI and COVID on Interviews
12:24 Crafting Your Story for Interviews
18:06 Leveraging AI in Daily TPM Tasks
21:58 Interviewing in a Hybrid Work Environment
25:27 Expectations in Different Company Sizes
26:55 Interview Structures: Big vs. Small Companies
31:32 Technical Program Manager Expectations
37:41 Demonstrating Leadership and Stakeholder Management
43:18 Improving Interview Performance: Dos and Don'ts
47:16 Resilience in the Interview Process
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Welcome to another episode of TPM Ridge, the podcast where we
bring in industry leaders in technical program management to
share their insights, experiences, and the lessons
they've learned on the front lines of the TPM movement.
I'm your host, Darren Katz, and each week we dive in deep into
the methodologies, mindsets, andtools that will empower you to
drive excellence in technical program management.
(00:31):
Whether you're new to TPM or looking to take your skills to
the next level, this podcast is your go to resource for
transforming TPM principles intoreal world success.
Welcome to another episode of TPM Ridge where we unpack the
nuts and bolts of tech leadership, program strategy,
(00:52):
and the art of making things happen.
So today we're diving into something that every technical
program manager, whether you youhave battle scars that are fresh
or decades old, needs to master.And that's the interview
process. It's a really exciting topic, so
I'm excited about this. The panel here is as well.
So the job market, in case you've been wandering or been
living under a rock is quite, it's been quite in flux the last
(01:14):
couple of years. We've seen waves of layoffs
during freezes in many verticalsand fierce competition in in
others. And you know, at the same time
as we've kind of moved on from COVID, we have AI and automation
that are reshaping what must have skills means.
So roles at once seem to be stable under pressure.
Roles that combine technical fluency and human leadership are
(01:37):
now being prioritized. Getting off first.
The TPM isn't just about what you know.
It's about how you package what you know, what you do, how you
tell your story, and how you stand out in a crowd.
Noisy candidate and noisy candidate.
Pretty much today's episodes. For anyone who's facing the next
round of interviews or wants to level up, we'll unpack what
interviewers really care about, how to craft stories from mess,
(02:00):
which technical gaps, and let's chat a bit about our experience
as well. Today on my panel, our panel, we
have James de Half and Michael Gutz, who's been Yeah, we are
regular panelists. So welcome guys.
Thanks for jumping on. OK, let's.
Happy to be here. Yeah, Yeah, a little bit of lag
(02:21):
here. Let's let's kick things off.
Let's zoom out a bit and let's talk about the anatomy of the
TPM interview and what hidden skills are hiring teams secretly
testing. So, you know, we can talk about,
you know, program execution, system design, behavioral
questions, metric based questions.
I don't know, let's let's open this up.
What's up top of mind for you guys and.
(02:43):
Let's start with an icebreaker. Yeah.
Do you still know how many interviews you have done in your
career? I think I lost track on that,
but it would be an interesting suggestion.
It's. Been a while.
Dozens. Yeah.
Dozens. OK.
Yeah. 4 digit at least. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. What about you, Michael?
Yeah, I don't know, like I thinkfor four digit depending on how
(03:05):
you count like CB scanning or like real interviews or like
what we also like to discuss today about system design
interviews, life challenges, howyou combine them, I think.
Yeah, You know, I could probablyeven say for some companies and
some interview processes are some so crazy that I probably
lost count of how many I've interviewed with that specific
company for that specific role. Like Google for example.
(03:26):
I don't know if you guys have a interviewing at Google, but it's
probably about 20 different interviews and over the span of
months. So it's, so it's interesting.
I think an, an interesting pointto to maybe start with that,
that we've discussed before is just like how much interviewing
has changed, even if you just look five years ago, right?
(03:46):
There's two big things in my mind that have totally reshaped
how interviews are handled and kind of the expectations with
them. And the first thing would be
the, the global pandemic of COVID that totally transformed
expectations and how interviews were either temporarily or how
they've forever changed interviews.
(04:07):
And then also the advent of AI and how you can use AI to
prepare really, really effectively.
But also I, I think we have all been in situations where
somebody on the other side of the table, an interviewee is
very obviously using AI and it does not sit well with most
(04:29):
interviewers, especially when it's like a behavioral thing,
right? There may be different
expectations set if it's like a vibe coding interview for
different roles, but for behavioral interviews, I've seen
it used and it just doesn't landvery well.
And so I think it'd be interesting to maybe we can
start in that direction of thosetwo big events and how they've
(04:50):
changed interviews as we know itand kind of what to do about
that. I can take a first pass.
So I think what always has been,there have been forums like
Reddit or any gazillion forums that explain to you how you pass
a Google interview or an Amazon interview.
I think AI made it easier to consolidate that information for
your specific case where you canalso like put your and how does
(05:12):
it fit and those kind of things and how it changed over COVID.
I think the interesting fact about COVID was as well as many
companies in tech have been hiring as crazy and then with
this clear paradigm that you need to do it remote.
Honestly, I'm glad that AI was not so present during COVID
times because otherwise, like I think we would have seen
different tech industry how interviews would would shape out
(05:36):
for the AI. I think my and I agreed to
change. It's hard to guess if the person
is using. Sometimes it's very obvious,
sometimes it's not. My biggest advice to that as
interviewer is that you need to always make an objective what
you get out of the interview. So let's take an example.
Let's say you do a system designinterview.
(05:57):
Then for sure the person can answer on that, but it's system
design interview can also be partially and behavior
interview. How is the person addressing the
challenges, the person asking questions back and this where it
gets like really, really obviousthat the person can handle very
challenging situations where youput them on the spot and then
you expose behavior. A question.
(06:17):
Although the interview is about system design and this makes it
very, I think effective that youwhat we also have also listed
down is like interviews and program execution, stakeholder
management. You I think you need to start in
the face of AI be present in interviews to combine or overlap
this certain kind of interviews or mix like how how they are
(06:38):
like set up. Yeah, I think, you know, there's
a lot of techniques in interviews, like, you know, for
example, using the star, the star method, right, You know,
and I I don't think there's anything wrong if you're
preparing and just putting all your thoughts and notes in in
and asking chat Tributi to actually put it into star
format. You know, it is your your things
in a structuring that way. That's that's that's one thing.
(06:58):
But I think interviewers, they're looking looking for
cultural fit. And if you're somebody, you
know, they're looking for behaviors and things like that
to see how you how you react to different situations.
And if you kind of try to synthesize it or try to, to come
up with an answer that that's not yours, you know, I think it
will come out, you know, one way, you know, if it's not, if
(07:18):
it's not personalized enough or some way it feels a bit
unauthentic, I feel. So yeah, the pandemic I guess
has, but you know, taking AI aside, you know, interviewing
from from home has, has made it easier, I guess to kind of have
notes and things on the side, even if it's not AI generated, I
(07:39):
guess. So you kind of have almost like
an open book exam type thing, right?
So where AI comes in to me is kind of reminds me of when you
have an open book exam, but instead of actually having that
book next to you, kind of just try copy an exam that that
exists from last year or the year before or something like
that. Like something basically trying
to do something in real time that to manufacture something in
(07:59):
real time as opposed to just, you know, looking at the notes
there. So I think, yeah, there's a 2
interestingly interesting phenomenons, I guess that has
sort of come in the last few years.
Yeah. What are you?
What are your thoughts, James? I guess, yeah.
I think it's interesting, you know, you were mentioning like
using AI to prepare, which is such a huge benefit we have now.
(08:20):
Looking back to how I would prepare for interviews prior, it
was fine, but I can prepare a lot faster and more effectively
now with AI and the the things that I do are fairly
straightforward. So like you mentioned, you can
use it to help put stories from your career into a star format.
And that is so beneficial because I don't know about you
(08:42):
guys, but like I go like month to month and sometimes all those
things that happen in my career and in my job, they start to
mesh together. And it's just like this mushy
continual story that I'm like, OK, I got to think really hard
about how to pull out these stories, how to pull out these
experiences and make them marketmyself to the interviewer,
(09:05):
right? So doing that with AI is way
better. The way that I've done it in the
past is basically like a free flowing brainstorm through like
a voice session with AI, right? Typically I've used ChatGPT and
I start the voice session with ChatGPT and I say, Hey, I'm
going to talk through a, an experience I had in my career
(09:29):
and I want you to help me craft it into a better story.
Don't make things up that I didn't do just to make me look
better. Don't just agree with me, but
help me pull up the elements that will help me do well in
this type of interview. And so then I go in and I just
kind of walk through it, right? No pressure.
I'm not trying to format it. I'm not trying to make it
polished. I'm just walking through it,
(09:50):
trying to relay my memory and it's really, really neat.
What comes out on the other sideis stitched together proposal
that needs a little bit more refining, but it's like, Hey,
this is a this is a good leadership moment that you
should pull from this. Hey, this is a good example of
how you were a communicator and being able to pinpoint those
just through story. Like it's not even a story that
(10:12):
I'm saying. It's just like, like I said,
free flowing thought. And then I would take it one
step further with AI as well, isyou set up a new session with
the voice enabled and you say you give it all the context for
the interview. You say, here's the job posting,
here's my resume, here's what I think they're going to be asking
about. Here's the type of interview.
It's a, maybe it's a communication stakeholder
(10:34):
management interview. Be the interviewer and I'm going
to be the interviewee and ask asyou ask questions, dive deeper
with one or two more follow-ups and interview me right?
And then give me a rating afterwards.
And so if you go through that, it may or may not give you the
exact feedback that you want, but you being able to just
(10:55):
practice getting those words outand having something respond.
And then having been able to respond back to something, you
get some of those nerves out, right?
The, the nervous jitters of doing an interview because the
last thing you want to do is show up to an interview having
never spoken the words to the questions that they're asking
you, You want to be prepared with like, hey, I've, I've, I've
(11:16):
kind of practiced this a little bit.
I know the stories I'm going to tell and, and as I listen to the
questions, I'm going to try and adapt these stories, but I've
done it enough times to where I,I can be adaptable.
I can have an effective narrative to the career and the
things that I want to communicate.
So those are two instances that I found really helpful.
I guess just like to summarize, that would be like the finding
(11:38):
your stories and then practicingtelling your stories.
Those are two use cases of usingAI for interviews, interview
prep. That is really, really valuable.
And maybe there's an advice for everyone out there, although
like you're not interviewing at the moment.
What I always like to do and what I advise my team also to do
(11:59):
is like to maintain and so-called achievement lock.
So I've worked like like every month, like you just write down
this is what I've done. This is maybe the dog attached
to it and this has been the impact.
And when you come into a situation, then you know, it's
similar to like and your performance like we're like,
everyone starts to think like, what have I done the last 12
(12:21):
months? And then you need to scrap it
together. But if you have a consistent
thing of an achievement log in place, then I think like you,
you can do like a very good input that is being delivered to
your preparation for the interview in case you end up in
that situation. Like Dorian, what you said, like
the short market is in flux. Yeah, I don't, I have one of
(12:41):
those. I don't call it an achievement
thing. I I call it, I call it my brag
dock. So I get to brag things that I'm
doing. It's hard to do that in other
avenues, but when it's just a dock that you use for yourself,
it's really helpful. I love that tip.
I don't know. I thought of when you said that.
I thought of Captain's log, you know, Star Trek, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, that's.
(13:03):
What it sounds like. Yeah.
So this is interesting. So I guess when we're looking at
the last couple of years, we talked about, you know,
interviewing from home, you know, remote interviews and
things like that using AI, I guess for TPMS, do you think
there have been changes in specifically the types of
interviews that TPMS themselves have faced aside from, you know,
(13:24):
pandemic or AI, any, any toolingor environmental changes, I
guess, Yeah. Anything you guys have noticed
that that has changed in the role of TPMS that you know have
been being asked? I've seen one additional
question come in more frequentlythen this is through like
talking to peers and seeing seeing interviews myself is like
(13:45):
just the question of like explain how you use AI for your
own productivity. That's a pretty basic
straightforward question. But I've seen it more often and
I think interviewers are becoming more curious about how
it is being leveraged and if this person is forward thinking
and saying how am I adapting to change right?
(14:08):
Well, let's let me ask you that question then.
I guess if I were interviewing you.
So how, how do you use, you know, aside from preparing for
interviews? You know, how else would you use
AI in the day-to-day life of a TPM man?
This is a rabbit hole. Hurry.
Are we going to go down this rabbit hole?
I'll give some quick some quick hitters of like ways that I've
(14:29):
used it and I've seen net positive.
There's a lot of ways that I've experimented with.
Some have been more toil than helpful, but there's been a lot
of ways that have been net positive.
So one of the ways, one of the things that we commonly do as
technical program managers is that we write plans, right?
We, we need to draft ways to accomplish a thing.
(14:50):
And this usually relies on product management writing up
some type of product requirements or specification.
There's also usually an aspect of engineering coming up with
like here's a proposed solution,but neither one of those are
plans for execution, breaking things down into milestones.
(15:11):
So in the past, you'd have to really kind of dig deep on
digesting those documents. You're standing them, probably
talking to, you know, the peoplewho wrote them to really
understand the nuance. And you should still do those
things, but you can accelerate that with using AI.
And so by dropping some of thosedocuments in those artefacts and
(15:33):
saying, hey, I need to make a plan for this, you can pretty
reasonably get 80% of the way there.
I would never trust it to make a100% ready to go execution plan,
but you can get 80% there with AI proposing some best practices
of execution. It can identify dependencies
between maybe there's multiple engineering solutions that need
(15:56):
to be implemented for this PRD so it can start to draw some of
these conclusions and these dependencies and propose them in
a plan of how we can think aboutexecuting on them.
So like I said, you get 80% there way faster.
And then the last 20% of that ishashing out the nitty gritty
kind of gnarly aspects of it that are much harder to
(16:18):
determine just through an AI trying to understand it.
And so if you can focus on that harder to solve 20%, but have
the 80% pretty quickly deliveredlike your value as a TPM and the
impact you're having just explodes in a good way, a good
explosion. Yeah, I think this might be a
topic for like a full episode. Yeah, but I wanna double down
(16:42):
what what you said, James. I think we see.
And I have to confess, I asked the question on AI use cases in
TPM interviews, like how they applied AI on their daily doing
within the company or outside. Just exactly what you said,
bring up that the other way. What I did with my team, we had
a hack of them last week so thateveryone gets four or five hours
(17:05):
hands on in building and use case for TPMS.
And one of them was James, what you said, like we used like we
had a a quarterly plan from froma team and what you normally do,
like you go to Jira and then youhack in the app is and buckle it
down. What we did is we used cursor in
order, which is using the Jira MCP server where you can set up
(17:27):
rules and then automatically epics are being generated.
And this is the small thing, saves you so much time.
And coming back to the interviews, This is a very good
use case if when you ask that inan interview, you immediately
feel that a person has applied AI and not only let it apply to
you. And this is where I think like
also strengthen your imposture in, in the, in the interviews
(17:50):
itself, because you then have something new for your Prag log
or captain's log to, to show andyou can immediately bring that
to yourself. One interesting question would
be how much of these things you should bring in interviews
proactively to the interviewer or are you waiting to be asked
for it? I think this is like always
(18:11):
another question that that I want to throw out there.
I had, for instance, certain candidates and they sended me
even before the first interview and, and full it was like a
mirror board where they laid outthe full architecture of our
product, which was quite good with being an outsider.
And this definitely made the candidates stood out from the
(18:34):
rest of the pack. And this was actually, I think
similar to AI in interviews, like you, I think you shouldn't
send your portfolio to the interviewer or like like do this
kind of things, like these aggressive things.
But you should, I think, I thinkyou should like in specific
situations, position yourself with certain things that you
have done which are living on the technology edge at the
(18:54):
moment. Wow, that's really cool.
Yeah, I like that MCP example. Yeah, I was.
We're actually playing around with that as well the last few
weeks, you know, the jury MCP and, and even as a TPM, you
know, I kind of combined, combined that with code vibing
and pretty much told that my, myterminal tool get this issue,
(19:17):
create a feature branch, look atthe requirements, build it.
And for me, I even sort of cut out the engineers, at least for
prototyping or at least get intothe first first few phases of
development. And I didn't even used to
actually create or flesh out user stories or tickets,
actually add user stories, acceptance criteria and things
like that. And they take a first go at it
and then I, you know, help out. The other thing that I've been,
(19:37):
I've been finding for TPMS especially, it's quite useful.
It's not just just as in ChatGPT, but using in a genetic
way. You can actually, there's some
frameworks where you can actually have one agent create,
for example, the quarterly planning and then another agent
act as the editor reviewer. And then you have another agent,
you know, basically this, you can have multiple agents work
together. And that actually I find as has
(19:58):
made did the final output a lot more closer to what you would do
anyway and less, you know, less changes and tweaks.
So yeah, that's cool, but. One of the questions that I I've
seen, you know, going back to your original question of, you
know, what do we see that is asked, you know, relates a lot
to the, the remote nature of a lot of companies now, which is
(20:20):
now quickly turning hybrid. And just the, it's not a
complicated question, but how doyou work across a hybrid team or
a distributed team? And it's not a new question
either. I think this has been asked even
before 2020. But I think it's more common now
to where we have to consider, for example, like communication
(20:41):
strategies for a large initiative.
How do you design that for a hybrid team that may or may not
be in the office or may not, mayor may not be in the same office
at all. So that's one that I've seen
creep up as well in in terms of regularity.
Yeah, and you can. Test that quite good.
So so I think we we see a littlebit of shift in coming from
(21:02):
COVID where everything was remote and then going into this
RTO slash hybrid slash remote setups across the tech industry.
What I as an interviewer and hiring manager always try to do
is at least try to invite the candidate once to the office.
It doesn't need to be this full day of five interviews.
You can also do that, I think very helpful if the challenge
(21:24):
there is that you don't have allthe interviewers in the office
like a chicken AG problem, but at least invite them to the
office. Because with that you can also
test them a little bit on how they would behave if they would
be in the office, because I see a lot when they're getting hired
in the interviews, they the teams are meeting on side at
(21:44):
least like quarterly or for a certain frequency.
How is their behavior inside theoffice environment and towards
like other colleagues. And then you for sure can get a
peer to quickly interview them. And I think this helps also to
strengthen the decision on candidates.
And this brings this human toucha little bit back to to the
interviews. And I think as an hiring
(22:06):
managers gives me so much inside.
If they come to the office and see from 90% of the people, I
would say that you throw them out of their known environment
which is remote for nowadays. But this gives you also a very
indirect thing next to like program execution or system
design. So it's a very deep behavioral
face to face interview. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
(22:26):
I like that too. I mean, I think, you know, we
talked about how competitive it is, you know, the last year or
two, you know, in terms of the environment, all that.
And I think being there in person, I think for interview as
well, I think it's advantageous to be able to show that personal
touch, to be able to have that, that, you know, show them how
you are in, in, in, in location as well.
(22:46):
And I think it gives you momentum as well.
I find doing interviews remotely, especially if they're
spread out over a few days or ofa week or two weeks, you kind of
lose momentum. You kind of go in ebbs and
flows, but you don't have that for me at least, I don't have
the consistent sort of performance that that I want to
achieve. I guess, you know, so it's
(23:07):
interesting, Yeah. If do you guys have any?
I don't know. Do you guys have any insights in
terms of, I guess to your expectations between different
companies, large companies, small companies?
I guess not recently, but I mean, I don't want to call it
out, but I mean, you know, over the last few years, I guess you
know, your last role, the role before and all that.
Any, anything that's that that you've noticed it's been
(23:31):
different or unique that could be helpful, I don't know.
For, I think for, for bigger companies, they have very
structured process and as an interviewer you have clear
guidance on what to do at a certain stage.
And as an interviewee, you or applicant you also have a good
expectation level. And I think when you look into
(23:54):
specifically in the AI tech space, how many companies are
being funded and invested, I think they don't have that like
proper process and interviewee, like where as an applicant, you,
you have way more or higher uncertainty that you need to,
that you need to face in that space.
And it could also go like to theextreme that people are getting
(24:15):
higher, like sharing their CV directly with some manager and
then going to the office and getting hired straight off,
straight off. I think the challenge is for
smaller companies to find the right talents out there.
And for the applicants. If you say I want to do
something new outside of the big, I heard like Mongo
(24:36):
companies is now the new word that you have I think a better
chance to also tap into a quicker hiring or getting hired
if you could stand out way more.And for bigger companies, I
think the changing the process will take ages to to amend them.
I thought they are like very creative and putting AI into the
(24:59):
interview process. Yeah, I found, I mean, I guess
my anecdote is working at Amazonas part of the interview loop
for for quite a few candidates. And you know, it's quite
structured to have like, you know, their leadership
principles and they kind of expect the candidates kind of
mentioned that or kind of wave that into their answer somehow.
And then you also have you have like a panel and you also have
(25:22):
what they call, I think an interview champion, somebody
who's not part of the org or part of the team who doesn't
have a vested interest basicallyand can veto, veto, you know,
the candidate basically. So that way you can't, you
cannot really just get some enough, you know, that, you
know, a friend of yours to kind of just come on and pass that.
So some are pretty rigid. Some smaller companies guess
(25:45):
like you said they can that there's more flexibility.
I find that it costs a lot more to have hire a bad person and
the first thing it is to it has a big impact on the culture as
well that I've seen go that way.So.
Yeah. It's interesting that you
mentioned that like these big companies, yeah, definitely have
more structure. And then there's two things on
(26:07):
my mind. I remember when I was leaving
Exxon Mobil, which is a huge company, right?
Just massive company, globally distributed.
I was trying to leave Exxon Mobil.
And the consistent theme that I noticed when I was interviewing
places, because most places are smaller than Exxon Mobil, they
would ask questions like how, how would you change the way you
(26:28):
operate knowing that this is a smaller company than what you
were previously in? So they were looking to
understand my own awareness thatcoming from a big company
typically has more process and that the culture is very
different. And they wanted to make sure
that there is like a good fit for culture and sense of urgency
(26:48):
because those things are very, very important and almost like a
differentiator a lot more in smaller companies.
And so it's really interesting trying to leave.
I had to be very, I had to become very self aware of what
those changes would be like. I'd say the other like really
big difference that I, I have noticed over the years is
(27:09):
smaller companies tend to have a, a less Michael, I think he
said it less a structured approach, right.
And as an interviewer that can be as an interviewee, that can
be really hard and you have to be very proactive.
And what I mean by that is they may not tell you exactly like
what the content of the interview is or they they may
(27:33):
not be as invested or have as much capacity to set you up
with. These are all the things that
we're going to be asking about. These are our expectations.
Here's some resources to help you do your best in the
interview. You see that a lot with the
companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, that they try
to give you things to be successful because they know
they have a pretty rigorous process.
(27:55):
Smaller companies, the interviewee has to be a lot more
proactive and if you don't have some of those details, you have
to find a tactful way to to ask about it, right.
Hey, I noticed I have a couple interviews on this day and there
is a general topic of leadership.
Is there anything specific that you're looking for?
So as I prepare, I can make sureto speak to some of those things
(28:19):
and, and just being able to havethose conversations with less
structured interviews is really important and kind of sets you
apart as well. Showing that you're, you're
thinking forward, you want to doyour best, you're curious and
you're not afraid to interact a little bit more and and and try
and and, and understand what they need.
Yeah, agreed to them. Yeah.
(28:40):
So something I was wondering about, I guess so not
necessarily something that's newas far as new phenomena or
anything like that, but you know, interviewing ATPMI guess
so technical, a technical portion, what I guess what are
the expectations you generally think or expect of a TPM, I
guess in terms of depth versus breadth, right?
So how much engineering they need to know?
(29:01):
How technical should they be in various top picks?
And how do you separate a good TPM from a great type TV, I
guess as far as technical depth?Do you guys have any thoughts on
that? Yeah.
I think when you you have an open position as an interviewer
and you have a certain interviewer pool or people that
help you hiring, then you need to outline to the peers on what
(29:21):
you're looking for. And this cuts a little bit into
the fact that you always in a bigger company look for
specialization in TPMS and smaller you look for more the
general TPM and when you're doneto go down into the system
design interview step. And I don't want to expose too
much on how we do interviewing, but if you look into the
challenge, you need to design the challenge in such a way that
(29:44):
you can ask the right question depending on the person as well.
So the person could, if you lookat your TPM, then the person
could be strong on the program management side.
And for the technical side, you always as an interior need to
ask the question, is this the right technical depth that a
person brings along? Because you when the person is
more like on the platform side and you might potentially go
(30:05):
down more the route of like database or infrastructure
discussions. Whereas front end where you have
like quicker iterations, you might emphasize more on the
program management side. But I think you need to have
what we do intern, like have a set of Evergreen questions,
those eight questions on our side that you go through on a
technical side that everyone needs specifically to answer.
(30:28):
And then you always get a good sense on where the person
stands. And you need to also have the
flexibility in the interview useto go deeper if you want.
And for an applicant, I think nowadays it's with the
accessibility to, to to information or like newsletters,
like buy, but go like, you can get yourself into a very solid
foundation of what system designmeans.
(30:50):
And what I value most is when they not only bring the concept
of explaining what a load balancer is, but they could also
apply it to an specific example.And this is what I like most,
that it's not only the regular foundation that you have, but
also how you could apply to, to the use case that you're being
asked to this and also the the Astar is from my point of view
(31:11):
that you can also relate it backto the company's product that
you're interviewing to. In our case, you can always like
very good relate that back to how it might help the company.
So it's threefolded, like foundation, you know what it is
and then apply it to the companythat you're owning to.
And this is coming back like AI could also help you with
answering or preparing that question beforehand.
(31:34):
Yeah, good. One thing I would say would that
every single TPM should have is under like this is so basic for
the world we live in. If you are a TPM in software and
that's the software development lifecycle.
And so if you're a listener to of this podcast and you don't
fully grasp the software development lifecycle, I think
(31:56):
that's, that's kind of base level before you can even get to
the system design stuff. Because if you don't understand
the software development lifecycle, your ability to
collaborate and to do stakeholder management, create a
communication strategy, all the other things will struggle if
you do not know the basics of software development life cycle.
(32:18):
And then like Michael was saying, like beyond that, how
deep do you need to be in systemdesign?
Hopefully there's a baseline, but it's usually a, it depends.
What is the role call for? Usually you can you can identify
a little bit of that in the job posting of how technical is this
(32:41):
technical program manager role? And don't, don't be afraid even
in like if you make it through the resume, you know, review
process, you're talking to the recruiter or the hiring manager
asking the question of, hey, I know this TPM role applies or
works in this domain and like this is what the job description
(33:01):
says. Is there anything else you can
tell me about the technical expectations for this role so I
can better prepare and pulling more of that information out
could be helpful? Yeah, if you're lucky.
Yeah, if you're lucky. I have to find a recruiter that
I was able to get that information for you.
I think that's that's fantastic.Once again, depends on on the
company depends on on all of that.
(33:22):
So I've been different situations like that, which is
interesting. But yeah, I think it's it's a
really strong point you you bring up about the the life
cycle. I think that's sort of the bread
and butter that you should have that understanding, should have
that, you know, comprehension, Ithink first and foremost.
And then you kind of have to look at the job specs and look
(33:44):
at where you are, where is your,you've worked in and things like
that. Your, your skills, get your
skills wheelhouse, I guess, and all that as well.
So technical aside, I guess I mean, what are, what are other
areas, I guess important for TPMS to be interviewed in like
stakeholder management? And, you know, I guess how do
(34:05):
you demonstrate, you know, that you are able to bring, you know,
clarity from chaos or handle, you know, competing priorities
and across team alignment questions and things like that,
You know, leadership without authority, you know, how do you
bring highlight those things, I guess, in your, your work?
I can do a step in to that like more aligning it with the
(34:25):
general like advice. So I think like most interviews,
when you see it through the interviews and everything in
this interview is about communication and talking.
What my advice, for instance, for applicants is as well like
no matter like if you want to demonstrate system design
without authority is that you use visuals for that.
And what you can always do in every interview, like if it's on
(34:46):
site, then you can use a whiteboard.
Or if it's like remote, then youcan also flash like, you know,
some, some online whiteboard without like hunching names.
And no matter if it's like influencing without authority is
quite hard to, to touch. But I like this whiteboard and
visual approach because this sticks with the interviewer or
(35:09):
at least with me like very much that people can draw a few
things and how they would do it,how they would structure that,
how they would do stakeholder management.
But I think the toughest one that you mentioned, Doran, is
the influencing without authority.
What we internal did is like we asked ourselves after the
interview, have I been influenced?
It's a very simple question is when you spend one hour with a
(35:31):
candidate, let's say on a systemdesign challenge, has the
applicant influenced you becauseyou have authority like you're
the hiring manager and has the person influenced you to in in
any kind of way? And this is where you can
directly after the interview, you can write that down as like
123 bullets. But this gives you a very good
insight. And you can only ask that
(35:52):
question a few minutes after theinterview when you still have
the last hour present. I would say sell toughest 122.
Sell me this pen, I guess. I don't know.
I really like that question. Has this candidate influenced
me? I'll have to use that in the
future. I'll add a little a bit more on
(36:13):
this of like, OK, non-technical,non AI related things.
Like one thing I always try and figure out in an interview is at
what scale has this person worked in terms of
organizational settings? And the reason I really look for
that is sometimes, most of the time in a TPM role, technical
program manager role, it's pretty large scale, right?
(36:35):
Like it's more than five teams, multiple organizations, like
there's a lot of stuff to orchestrate.
And sometimes there are are candidates that are trying to
get their career to go in that direction and and have had more
experience as a scrum master, for example, with one team.
And so while the candidate may be a very, very good scrum
(36:59):
master, it's really difficult toassess scale with them if
they've never had that scaled experience, right.
So asking questions around that of tell me about the times
you've worked cross functionallybeyond one team.
Tell me about a time you've had to work across multiple
organizations, whether it be engineering and legal and
(37:23):
security. Tell me about it.
You know, just trying to push onthat fact of like get outside
your own team. And even I've interviewed scrum
masters who have done a lot of that, who have have that cross
functional experience. They happen to be focused on one
team, but they start to get intothat larger scale coordination.
(37:44):
And I want to mention that because being a scrum master
does not disqualify you from this role.
It's a fantastic like prep role for ATPM, but pushing on that,
that concept of scale is really important to me when I do
interviews. What's, what's 1 subtle signal
that tells you that someone willthrive as a TPM?
(38:06):
You know, you mentioned, you know, people are scrum masters
and folks, you know, working different skills.
But is there, is there a subtle signal that comes to mind for
you guys that you can think of? When the interview turns into a
two way discussion, because I strongly believe that the
interview process in itself is always a two way St. and you
need to be aligned with the applicant, applicant with you.
(38:27):
And when an interview turns intoa discussion.
That's why I always have 15 minutes booked in my calendar
after each interview. Either like to sum it up or to
spend more time with a candidate.
This is a very strong signal andit turns into a discussion.
Yeah, I was going to say something very similar of when
it doesn't feel like an interview anymore or when I,
when I walk away from the interview and I'm like, you
(38:50):
know, the way that they handled that problem and that the way
they structured it, I wonder if that would work with this other
problem we're having over here, right.
Like they're able to share things where it's like, OK,
that's fantastic value add to this.
Domain and you've been influenced, I guess.
I've been influenced. They did it.
(39:11):
What do interviewers wish Canada's would stop doing?
Is there anything you can? I know we talked about AI and
kind of having AAI screen up. Where are you, you know, during
the interview process? Anything else that you think
interviewers wish Canada's wouldstop doing?
There's one thing that comes to my mind right away that I'll
just jump in and say deductions that are way too long.
That is 1. That is one thing that I I know
(39:33):
interviewer interviewees are excited and maybe a little bit
of nervous, but when an when an interviewee takes 10 minutes to
introduce themselves, it's really tough to to move forward.
That's a huge plus one. I would, I would also say that,
and if it's like getting in, if candidates tell station, station
(39:57):
by station or company by companyand what they have done.
I think my, my tip for that for,for applicants would be to, to
pick out certain impactful things that you have done.
And how do they fit into, into the job you're interviewing for?
Because it shows the interviewerin itself that you have read the
job description that you have prepared immediately from
(40:18):
minutes here on. And then you can also like be,
let's say, confident enough. And ask the interview like do
you want to know more or do you want a deep dive more?
Because you can assume nowadays that interviewers have read this
UV, at least in the preparation.As an interview you should do
that. Yeah, it's a good point.
(40:39):
I mean, yeah, I mean, your resume is there.
I mean, you shouldn't just read off, you know, resume anything
like that. For me, I think it's not just
the intro. I think throughout the interview
process, you should answer the questions, you know, sort of
customize it to the questions being asked rather than just
sort of being verbose and kind of going through, you know, half
your life story or anything likethat.
(41:00):
So I think it's being very strategic and scope scopeful, I
guess. And scopeful, a word I don't
know. Scoping scopeful, Yeah, you
know, it's straining. Yeah, yeah, I, I think, you
know, treating it, stop treatinginterviews like interrogations,
which hopefully the interviewer sets that up environment, sets
(41:22):
up that environment really well where it doesn't feel like an
interrogation. And, and what does that look
like? Well, the interrogation looks
like an interviewee thinking they just need to say all the
answers and then wait for the next question, say all the
answers, wait for the next question.
That that's, that is not the best method.
And Michael, like you mentioned,like when you know, it's it's
(41:43):
going well is when it is a discussion, you know, there's,
there's questions that they comeback with, they pause and they
say, OK, I think that that's answered the question, but do
you want to go deeper on that? Because I can.
Let's see where this goes. So that would be one thing to
make sure to stop doing is stop thinking and having the mindset
(42:03):
of this is an interrogation. I can't ask questions, I can't
pause because it's not what it should be.
Yeah, it's too transactional, I guess.
Yeah, transactional would be a good way to say it.
OK, well, we're we're, we're at time.
Yeah. It's been a great, great
conversation. And, you know, in closing
thoughts here, I'd love to, you know, if there's any advice you
(42:24):
guys can give to the, to our listeners here.
You know, it's tough, tough world out there.
And I was very competitive. But in terms of preparing for
interviews, you know, both, you know, or, or trying to the
emotional resilience side of it.And if you have any tips, you
know, please share them. What?
What are you guys parting words for you guys for our listeners?
Interviews are tough. They're really tough and they're
(42:47):
not just tough because the person on the other side of the
table wants to give you a bad day or make your life hard.
It's tough just because of like the market that we're in right
now. And sometimes you may interview
really, really well and that maystill not be a good fit for what
that team is looking for specifically.
And so it's really hard. But this is something that I've
(43:07):
tried to do in the past when I've interviewed is, is decouple
my interview performance with the result of the interview.
Now that, that sounds weird, butsometimes if I get feedback from
an interview and I, I seek that,sometimes I'm able to pick a
part like, OK, like these were the things that went really
well. They were looking for domain
expertise over here and I don't have that.
(43:28):
And so being able to, to pick myself up again and say, I
performed well in that interview.
It was not a match. I wasn't lucky, so I got to keep
looking and that's really hard. My thing is, is one thing like
reach out to peers to help you prepare for the interviews.
There's so much great resources out there.
And I think if you open LinkedIn, you can just type in
(43:51):
technical programmers and you find so much people who can help
you. And I will not also take the
chance like for instance, in this TPM community on slag,
there's like Elena who who drives mock interviews and just
doing a really great job. If you are in this situation.
And I can only recommend to joinone of the course touching on
different topics. And I think this also makes you
(44:14):
stronger like when preparing. But you can also when you have
found a job like give back to the community in helping on what
has landed. It's yeah, very profound yes and
thanks for the plug there. So yeah, if you go to TPM events
at org, there's you can get access to a slack.
I think this scored as well. So those are great great
(44:35):
feedback and great things for you guys to to take.
Yeah, it is a tough, tough you have to be resilient.
And you know, it's also keep on trying, keep on learning, keep
on keep on evolving, right from every interview you learn
something new, you learn to to calibrate and recalibrate.
And you know this many mock interviews as you can, you know,
reach, you know, reach into yourpeers, your colleagues or ex
(44:56):
colleagues or you know, folks like that.
So all right guys, well, thank you.
This has been a very insightful podcast.
All this is enjoy that and we'lllook forward to seeing you guys
all next time. And to you guys as well.
Michael and James have a great rest of the month.
Thank you, Doran. Thank you, Michael.
Welcome to another episode of TPM Ridge, the podcast where we
bring in industry leaders in technical program management to
share their insights, experiences, and the lessons
they've learned on the front lines of the TPM movement.
I'm your host, Darren Katz, and each week we dive in deep into
the methodologies, mindsets, andtools that will empower you to
drive excellence in technical program management.
(00:31):
Whether you're new to TPM or looking to take your skills to
the next level, this podcast is your go to resource for
transforming TPM principles intoreal world success.
Welcome to another episode of TPM Ridge where we unpack the
nuts and bolts of tech leadership, program strategy,
(00:52):
and the art of making things happen.
So today we're diving into something that every technical
program manager, whether you youhave battle scars that are fresh
or decades old, needs to master.And that's the interview
process. It's a really exciting topic, so
I'm excited about this. The panel here is as well.
So the job market, in case you've been wandering or been
living under a rock is quite, it's been quite in flux the last
(01:14):
couple of years. We've seen waves of layoffs
during freezes in many verticalsand fierce competition in in
others. And you know, at the same time
as we've kind of moved on from COVID, we have AI and automation
that are reshaping what must have skills means.
So roles at once seem to be stable under pressure.
Roles that combine technical fluency and human leadership are
(01:37):
now being prioritized. Getting off first.
The TPM isn't just about what you know.
It's about how you package what you know, what you do, how you
tell your story, and how you stand out in a crowd.
Noisy candidate and noisy candidate.
Pretty much today's episodes. For anyone who's facing the next
round of interviews or wants to level up, we'll unpack what
interviewers really care about, how to craft stories from mess,
(02:00):
which technical gaps, and let's chat a bit about our experience
as well. Today on my panel, our panel, we
have James de Half and Michael Gutz, who's been Yeah, we are
regular panelists. So welcome guys.
Thanks for jumping on. OK, let's.
Happy to be here. Yeah, Yeah, a little bit of lag
(02:21):
here. Let's let's kick things off.
Let's zoom out a bit and let's talk about the anatomy of the
TPM interview and what hidden skills are hiring teams secretly
testing. So, you know, we can talk about,
you know, program execution, system design, behavioral
questions, metric based questions.
I don't know, let's let's open this up.
What's up top of mind for you guys and.
(02:43):
Let's start with an icebreaker. Yeah.
Do you still know how many interviews you have done in your
career? I think I lost track on that,
but it would be an interesting suggestion.
It's. Been a while.
Dozens. Yeah.
Dozens. OK.
Yeah. 4 digit at least. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. What about you, Michael?
Yeah, I don't know, like I thinkfor four digit depending on how
(03:05):
you count like CB scanning or like real interviews or like
what we also like to discuss today about system design
interviews, life challenges, howyou combine them, I think.
Yeah, You know, I could probablyeven say for some companies and
some interview processes are some so crazy that I probably
lost count of how many I've interviewed with that specific
company for that specific role. Like Google for example.
(03:26):
I don't know if you guys have a interviewing at Google, but it's
probably about 20 different interviews and over the span of
months. So it's, so it's interesting.
I think an, an interesting pointto to maybe start with that,
that we've discussed before is just like how much interviewing
has changed, even if you just look five years ago, right?
(03:46):
There's two big things in my mind that have totally reshaped
how interviews are handled and kind of the expectations with
them. And the first thing would be
the, the global pandemic of COVID that totally transformed
expectations and how interviews were either temporarily or how
they've forever changed interviews.
(04:07):
And then also the advent of AI and how you can use AI to
prepare really, really effectively.
But also I, I think we have all been in situations where
somebody on the other side of the table, an interviewee is
very obviously using AI and it does not sit well with most
(04:29):
interviewers, especially when it's like a behavioral thing,
right? There may be different
expectations set if it's like a vibe coding interview for
different roles, but for behavioral interviews, I've seen
it used and it just doesn't landvery well.
And so I think it'd be interesting to maybe we can
start in that direction of thosetwo big events and how they've
(04:50):
changed interviews as we know itand kind of what to do about
that. I can take a first pass.
So I think what always has been,there have been forums like
Reddit or any gazillion forums that explain to you how you pass
a Google interview or an Amazon interview.
I think AI made it easier to consolidate that information for
your specific case where you canalso like put your and how does
(05:12):
it fit and those kind of things and how it changed over COVID.
I think the interesting fact about COVID was as well as many
companies in tech have been hiring as crazy and then with
this clear paradigm that you need to do it remote.
Honestly, I'm glad that AI was not so present during COVID
times because otherwise, like I think we would have seen
different tech industry how interviews would would shape out
(05:36):
for the AI. I think my and I agreed to
change. It's hard to guess if the person
is using. Sometimes it's very obvious,
sometimes it's not. My biggest advice to that as
interviewer is that you need to always make an objective what
you get out of the interview. So let's take an example.
Let's say you do a system designinterview.
(05:57):
Then for sure the person can answer on that, but it's system
design interview can also be partially and behavior
interview. How is the person addressing the
challenges, the person asking questions back and this where it
gets like really, really obviousthat the person can handle very
challenging situations where youput them on the spot and then
you expose behavior. A question.
(06:17):
Although the interview is about system design and this makes it
very, I think effective that youwhat we also have also listed
down is like interviews and program execution, stakeholder
management. You I think you need to start in
the face of AI be present in interviews to combine or overlap
this certain kind of interviews or mix like how how they are
(06:38):
like set up. Yeah, I think, you know, there's
a lot of techniques in interviews, like, you know, for
example, using the star, the star method, right, You know,
and I I don't think there's anything wrong if you're
preparing and just putting all your thoughts and notes in in
and asking chat Tributi to actually put it into star
format. You know, it is your your things
in a structuring that way. That's that's that's one thing.
(06:58):
But I think interviewers, they're looking looking for
cultural fit. And if you're somebody, you
know, they're looking for behaviors and things like that
to see how you how you react to different situations.
And if you kind of try to synthesize it or try to, to come
up with an answer that that's not yours, you know, I think it
will come out, you know, one way, you know, if it's not, if
(07:18):
it's not personalized enough or some way it feels a bit
unauthentic, I feel. So yeah, the pandemic I guess
has, but you know, taking AI aside, you know, interviewing
from from home has, has made it easier, I guess to kind of have
notes and things on the side, even if it's not AI generated, I
(07:39):
guess. So you kind of have almost like
an open book exam type thing, right?
So where AI comes in to me is kind of reminds me of when you
have an open book exam, but instead of actually having that
book next to you, kind of just try copy an exam that that
exists from last year or the year before or something like
that. Like something basically trying
to do something in real time that to manufacture something in
(07:59):
real time as opposed to just, you know, looking at the notes
there. So I think, yeah, there's a 2
interestingly interesting phenomenons, I guess that has
sort of come in the last few years.
Yeah. What are you?
What are your thoughts, James? I guess, yeah.
I think it's interesting, you know, you were mentioning like
using AI to prepare, which is such a huge benefit we have now.
(08:20):
Looking back to how I would prepare for interviews prior, it
was fine, but I can prepare a lot faster and more effectively
now with AI and the the things that I do are fairly
straightforward. So like you mentioned, you can
use it to help put stories from your career into a star format.
And that is so beneficial because I don't know about you
(08:42):
guys, but like I go like month to month and sometimes all those
things that happen in my career and in my job, they start to
mesh together. And it's just like this mushy
continual story that I'm like, OK, I got to think really hard
about how to pull out these stories, how to pull out these
experiences and make them marketmyself to the interviewer,
(09:05):
right? So doing that with AI is way
better. The way that I've done it in the
past is basically like a free flowing brainstorm through like
a voice session with AI, right? Typically I've used ChatGPT and
I start the voice session with ChatGPT and I say, Hey, I'm
going to talk through a, an experience I had in my career
(09:29):
and I want you to help me craft it into a better story.
Don't make things up that I didn't do just to make me look
better. Don't just agree with me, but
help me pull up the elements that will help me do well in
this type of interview. And so then I go in and I just
kind of walk through it, right? No pressure.
I'm not trying to format it. I'm not trying to make it
polished. I'm just walking through it,
(09:50):
trying to relay my memory and it's really, really neat.
What comes out on the other sideis stitched together proposal
that needs a little bit more refining, but it's like, Hey,
this is a this is a good leadership moment that you
should pull from this. Hey, this is a good example of
how you were a communicator and being able to pinpoint those
just through story. Like it's not even a story that
(10:12):
I'm saying. It's just like, like I said,
free flowing thought. And then I would take it one
step further with AI as well, isyou set up a new session with
the voice enabled and you say you give it all the context for
the interview. You say, here's the job posting,
here's my resume, here's what I think they're going to be asking
about. Here's the type of interview.
It's a, maybe it's a communication stakeholder
(10:34):
management interview. Be the interviewer and I'm going
to be the interviewee and ask asyou ask questions, dive deeper
with one or two more follow-ups and interview me right?
And then give me a rating afterwards.
And so if you go through that, it may or may not give you the
exact feedback that you want, but you being able to just
(10:55):
practice getting those words outand having something respond.
And then having been able to respond back to something, you
get some of those nerves out, right?
The, the nervous jitters of doing an interview because the
last thing you want to do is show up to an interview having
never spoken the words to the questions that they're asking
you, You want to be prepared with like, hey, I've, I've, I've
(11:16):
kind of practiced this a little bit.
I know the stories I'm going to tell and, and as I listen to the
questions, I'm going to try and adapt these stories, but I've
done it enough times to where I,I can be adaptable.
I can have an effective narrative to the career and the
things that I want to communicate.
So those are two instances that I found really helpful.
I guess just like to summarize, that would be like the finding
(11:38):
your stories and then practicingtelling your stories.
Those are two use cases of usingAI for interviews, interview
prep. That is really, really valuable.
And maybe there's an advice for everyone out there, although
like you're not interviewing at the moment.
What I always like to do and what I advise my team also to do
(11:59):
is like to maintain and so-called achievement lock.
So I've worked like like every month, like you just write down
this is what I've done. This is maybe the dog attached
to it and this has been the impact.
And when you come into a situation, then you know, it's
similar to like and your performance like we're like,
everyone starts to think like, what have I done the last 12
(12:21):
months? And then you need to scrap it
together. But if you have a consistent
thing of an achievement log in place, then I think like you,
you can do like a very good input that is being delivered to
your preparation for the interview in case you end up in
that situation. Like Dorian, what you said, like
the short market is in flux. Yeah, I don't, I have one of
(12:41):
those. I don't call it an achievement
thing. I I call it, I call it my brag
dock. So I get to brag things that I'm
doing. It's hard to do that in other
avenues, but when it's just a dock that you use for yourself,
it's really helpful. I love that tip.
I don't know. I thought of when you said that.
I thought of Captain's log, you know, Star Trek, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, that's.
(13:03):
What it sounds like. Yeah.
So this is interesting. So I guess when we're looking at
the last couple of years, we talked about, you know,
interviewing from home, you know, remote interviews and
things like that using AI, I guess for TPMS, do you think
there have been changes in specifically the types of
interviews that TPMS themselves have faced aside from, you know,
(13:24):
pandemic or AI, any, any toolingor environmental changes, I
guess, Yeah. Anything you guys have noticed
that that has changed in the role of TPMS that you know have
been being asked? I've seen one additional
question come in more frequentlythen this is through like
talking to peers and seeing seeing interviews myself is like
(13:45):
just the question of like explain how you use AI for your
own productivity. That's a pretty basic
straightforward question. But I've seen it more often and
I think interviewers are becoming more curious about how
it is being leveraged and if this person is forward thinking
and saying how am I adapting to change right?
(14:08):
Well, let's let me ask you that question then.
I guess if I were interviewing you.
So how, how do you use, you know, aside from preparing for
interviews? You know, how else would you use
AI in the day-to-day life of a TPM man?
This is a rabbit hole. Hurry.
Are we going to go down this rabbit hole?
I'll give some quick some quick hitters of like ways that I've
(14:29):
used it and I've seen net positive.
There's a lot of ways that I've experimented with.
Some have been more toil than helpful, but there's been a lot
of ways that have been net positive.
So one of the ways, one of the things that we commonly do as
technical program managers is that we write plans, right?
We, we need to draft ways to accomplish a thing.
(14:50):
And this usually relies on product management writing up
some type of product requirements or specification.
There's also usually an aspect of engineering coming up with
like here's a proposed solution,but neither one of those are
plans for execution, breaking things down into milestones.
(15:11):
So in the past, you'd have to really kind of dig deep on
digesting those documents. You're standing them, probably
talking to, you know, the peoplewho wrote them to really
understand the nuance. And you should still do those
things, but you can accelerate that with using AI.
And so by dropping some of thosedocuments in those artefacts and
(15:33):
saying, hey, I need to make a plan for this, you can pretty
reasonably get 80% of the way there.
I would never trust it to make a100% ready to go execution plan,
but you can get 80% there with AI proposing some best practices
of execution. It can identify dependencies
between maybe there's multiple engineering solutions that need
(15:56):
to be implemented for this PRD so it can start to draw some of
these conclusions and these dependencies and propose them in
a plan of how we can think aboutexecuting on them.
So like I said, you get 80% there way faster.
And then the last 20% of that ishashing out the nitty gritty
kind of gnarly aspects of it that are much harder to
(16:18):
determine just through an AI trying to understand it.
And so if you can focus on that harder to solve 20%, but have
the 80% pretty quickly deliveredlike your value as a TPM and the
impact you're having just explodes in a good way, a good
explosion. Yeah, I think this might be a
topic for like a full episode. Yeah, but I wanna double down
(16:42):
what what you said, James. I think we see.
And I have to confess, I asked the question on AI use cases in
TPM interviews, like how they applied AI on their daily doing
within the company or outside. Just exactly what you said,
bring up that the other way. What I did with my team, we had
a hack of them last week so thateveryone gets four or five hours
(17:05):
hands on in building and use case for TPMS.
And one of them was James, what you said, like we used like we
had a a quarterly plan from froma team and what you normally do,
like you go to Jira and then youhack in the app is and buckle it
down. What we did is we used cursor in
order, which is using the Jira MCP server where you can set up
(17:27):
rules and then automatically epics are being generated.
And this is the small thing, saves you so much time.
And coming back to the interviews, This is a very good
use case if when you ask that inan interview, you immediately
feel that a person has applied AI and not only let it apply to
you. And this is where I think like
also strengthen your imposture in, in the, in the interviews
(17:50):
itself, because you then have something new for your Prag log
or captain's log to, to show andyou can immediately bring that
to yourself. One interesting question would
be how much of these things you should bring in interviews
proactively to the interviewer or are you waiting to be asked
for it? I think this is like always
(18:11):
another question that that I want to throw out there.
I had, for instance, certain candidates and they sended me
even before the first interview and, and full it was like a
mirror board where they laid outthe full architecture of our
product, which was quite good with being an outsider.
And this definitely made the candidates stood out from the
(18:34):
rest of the pack. And this was actually, I think
similar to AI in interviews, like you, I think you shouldn't
send your portfolio to the interviewer or like like do this
kind of things, like these aggressive things.
But you should, I think, I thinkyou should like in specific
situations, position yourself with certain things that you
have done which are living on the technology edge at the
(18:54):
moment. Wow, that's really cool.
Yeah, I like that MCP example. Yeah, I was.
We're actually playing around with that as well the last few
weeks, you know, the jury MCP and, and even as a TPM, you
know, I kind of combined, combined that with code vibing
and pretty much told that my, myterminal tool get this issue,
(19:17):
create a feature branch, look atthe requirements, build it.
And for me, I even sort of cut out the engineers, at least for
prototyping or at least get intothe first first few phases of
development. And I didn't even used to
actually create or flesh out user stories or tickets,
actually add user stories, acceptance criteria and things
like that. And they take a first go at it
and then I, you know, help out. The other thing that I've been,
(19:37):
I've been finding for TPMS especially, it's quite useful.
It's not just just as in ChatGPT, but using in a genetic
way. You can actually, there's some
frameworks where you can actually have one agent create,
for example, the quarterly planning and then another agent
act as the editor reviewer. And then you have another agent,
you know, basically this, you can have multiple agents work
together. And that actually I find as has
(19:58):
made did the final output a lot more closer to what you would do
anyway and less, you know, less changes and tweaks.
So yeah, that's cool, but. One of the questions that I I've
seen, you know, going back to your original question of, you
know, what do we see that is asked, you know, relates a lot
to the, the remote nature of a lot of companies now, which is
(20:20):
now quickly turning hybrid. And just the, it's not a
complicated question, but how doyou work across a hybrid team or
a distributed team? And it's not a new question
either. I think this has been asked even
before 2020. But I think it's more common now
to where we have to consider, for example, like communication
(20:41):
strategies for a large initiative.
How do you design that for a hybrid team that may or may not
be in the office or may not, mayor may not be in the same office
at all. So that's one that I've seen
creep up as well in in terms of regularity.
Yeah, and you can. Test that quite good.
So so I think we we see a littlebit of shift in coming from
(21:02):
COVID where everything was remote and then going into this
RTO slash hybrid slash remote setups across the tech industry.
What I as an interviewer and hiring manager always try to do
is at least try to invite the candidate once to the office.
It doesn't need to be this full day of five interviews.
You can also do that, I think very helpful if the challenge
(21:24):
there is that you don't have allthe interviewers in the office
like a chicken AG problem, but at least invite them to the
office. Because with that you can also
test them a little bit on how they would behave if they would
be in the office, because I see a lot when they're getting hired
in the interviews, they the teams are meeting on side at
(21:44):
least like quarterly or for a certain frequency.
How is their behavior inside theoffice environment and towards
like other colleagues. And then you for sure can get a
peer to quickly interview them. And I think this helps also to
strengthen the decision on candidates.
And this brings this human toucha little bit back to to the
interviews. And I think as an hiring
(22:06):
managers gives me so much inside.
If they come to the office and see from 90% of the people, I
would say that you throw them out of their known environment
which is remote for nowadays. But this gives you also a very
indirect thing next to like program execution or system
design. So it's a very deep behavioral
face to face interview. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
(22:26):
I like that too. I mean, I think, you know, we
talked about how competitive it is, you know, the last year or
two, you know, in terms of the environment, all that.
And I think being there in person, I think for interview as
well, I think it's advantageous to be able to show that personal
touch, to be able to have that, that, you know, show them how
you are in, in, in, in location as well.
(22:46):
And I think it gives you momentum as well.
I find doing interviews remotely, especially if they're
spread out over a few days or ofa week or two weeks, you kind of
lose momentum. You kind of go in ebbs and
flows, but you don't have that for me at least, I don't have
the consistent sort of performance that that I want to
achieve. I guess, you know, so it's
(23:07):
interesting, Yeah. If do you guys have any?
I don't know. Do you guys have any insights in
terms of, I guess to your expectations between different
companies, large companies, small companies?
I guess not recently, but I mean, I don't want to call it
out, but I mean, you know, over the last few years, I guess you
know, your last role, the role before and all that.
Any, anything that's that that you've noticed it's been
(23:31):
different or unique that could be helpful, I don't know.
For, I think for, for bigger companies, they have very
structured process and as an interviewer you have clear
guidance on what to do at a certain stage.
And as an interviewee, you or applicant you also have a good
expectation level. And I think when you look into
(23:54):
specifically in the AI tech space, how many companies are
being funded and invested, I think they don't have that like
proper process and interviewee, like where as an applicant, you,
you have way more or higher uncertainty that you need to,
that you need to face in that space.
And it could also go like to theextreme that people are getting
(24:15):
higher, like sharing their CV directly with some manager and
then going to the office and getting hired straight off,
straight off. I think the challenge is for
smaller companies to find the right talents out there.
And for the applicants. If you say I want to do
something new outside of the big, I heard like Mongo
(24:36):
companies is now the new word that you have I think a better
chance to also tap into a quicker hiring or getting hired
if you could stand out way more.And for bigger companies, I
think the changing the process will take ages to to amend them.
I thought they are like very creative and putting AI into the
(24:59):
interview process. Yeah, I found, I mean, I guess
my anecdote is working at Amazonas part of the interview loop
for for quite a few candidates. And you know, it's quite
structured to have like, you know, their leadership
principles and they kind of expect the candidates kind of
mentioned that or kind of wave that into their answer somehow.
And then you also have you have like a panel and you also have
(25:22):
what they call, I think an interview champion, somebody
who's not part of the org or part of the team who doesn't
have a vested interest basicallyand can veto, veto, you know,
the candidate basically. So that way you can't, you
cannot really just get some enough, you know, that, you
know, a friend of yours to kind of just come on and pass that.
So some are pretty rigid. Some smaller companies guess
(25:45):
like you said they can that there's more flexibility.
I find that it costs a lot more to have hire a bad person and
the first thing it is to it has a big impact on the culture as
well that I've seen go that way.So.
Yeah. It's interesting that you
mentioned that like these big companies, yeah, definitely have
more structure. And then there's two things on
(26:07):
my mind. I remember when I was leaving
Exxon Mobil, which is a huge company, right?
Just massive company, globally distributed.
I was trying to leave Exxon Mobil.
And the consistent theme that I noticed when I was interviewing
places, because most places are smaller than Exxon Mobil, they
would ask questions like how, how would you change the way you
(26:28):
operate knowing that this is a smaller company than what you
were previously in? So they were looking to
understand my own awareness thatcoming from a big company
typically has more process and that the culture is very
different. And they wanted to make sure
that there is like a good fit for culture and sense of urgency
(26:48):
because those things are very, very important and almost like a
differentiator a lot more in smaller companies.
And so it's really interesting trying to leave.
I had to be very, I had to become very self aware of what
those changes would be like. I'd say the other like really
big difference that I, I have noticed over the years is
(27:09):
smaller companies tend to have a, a less Michael, I think he
said it less a structured approach, right.
And as an interviewer that can be as an interviewee, that can
be really hard and you have to be very proactive.
And what I mean by that is they may not tell you exactly like
what the content of the interview is or they they may
(27:33):
not be as invested or have as much capacity to set you up
with. These are all the things that
we're going to be asking about. These are our expectations.
Here's some resources to help you do your best in the
interview. You see that a lot with the
companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, that they try
to give you things to be successful because they know
they have a pretty rigorous process.
(27:55):
Smaller companies, the interviewee has to be a lot more
proactive and if you don't have some of those details, you have
to find a tactful way to to ask about it, right.
Hey, I noticed I have a couple interviews on this day and there
is a general topic of leadership.
Is there anything specific that you're looking for?
So as I prepare, I can make sureto speak to some of those things
(28:19):
and, and just being able to havethose conversations with less
structured interviews is really important and kind of sets you
apart as well. Showing that you're, you're
thinking forward, you want to doyour best, you're curious and
you're not afraid to interact a little bit more and and and try
and and, and understand what they need.
Yeah, agreed to them. Yeah.
(28:40):
So something I was wondering about, I guess so not
necessarily something that's newas far as new phenomena or
anything like that, but you know, interviewing ATPMI guess
so technical, a technical portion, what I guess what are
the expectations you generally think or expect of a TPM, I
guess in terms of depth versus breadth, right?
So how much engineering they need to know?
(29:01):
How technical should they be in various top picks?
And how do you separate a good TPM from a great type TV, I
guess as far as technical depth?Do you guys have any thoughts on
that? Yeah.
I think when you you have an open position as an interviewer
and you have a certain interviewer pool or people that
help you hiring, then you need to outline to the peers on what
(29:21):
you're looking for. And this cuts a little bit into
the fact that you always in a bigger company look for
specialization in TPMS and smaller you look for more the
general TPM and when you're doneto go down into the system
design interview step. And I don't want to expose too
much on how we do interviewing, but if you look into the
challenge, you need to design the challenge in such a way that
(29:44):
you can ask the right question depending on the person as well.
So the person could, if you lookat your TPM, then the person
could be strong on the program management side.
And for the technical side, you always as an interior need to
ask the question, is this the right technical depth that a
person brings along? Because you when the person is
more like on the platform side and you might potentially go
(30:05):
down more the route of like database or infrastructure
discussions. Whereas front end where you have
like quicker iterations, you might emphasize more on the
program management side. But I think you need to have
what we do intern, like have a set of Evergreen questions,
those eight questions on our side that you go through on a
technical side that everyone needs specifically to answer.
(30:28):
And then you always get a good sense on where the person
stands. And you need to also have the
flexibility in the interview useto go deeper if you want.
And for an applicant, I think nowadays it's with the
accessibility to, to to information or like newsletters,
like buy, but go like, you can get yourself into a very solid
foundation of what system designmeans.
(30:50):
And what I value most is when they not only bring the concept
of explaining what a load balancer is, but they could also
apply it to an specific example.And this is what I like most,
that it's not only the regular foundation that you have, but
also how you could apply to, to the use case that you're being
asked to this and also the the Astar is from my point of view
(31:11):
that you can also relate it backto the company's product that
you're interviewing to. In our case, you can always like
very good relate that back to how it might help the company.
So it's threefolded, like foundation, you know what it is
and then apply it to the companythat you're owning to.
And this is coming back like AI could also help you with
answering or preparing that question beforehand.
(31:34):
Yeah, good. One thing I would say would that
every single TPM should have is under like this is so basic for
the world we live in. If you are a TPM in software and
that's the software development lifecycle.
And so if you're a listener to of this podcast and you don't
fully grasp the software development lifecycle, I think
(31:56):
that's, that's kind of base level before you can even get to
the system design stuff. Because if you don't understand
the software development lifecycle, your ability to
collaborate and to do stakeholder management, create a
communication strategy, all the other things will struggle if
you do not know the basics of software development life cycle.
(32:18):
And then like Michael was saying, like beyond that, how
deep do you need to be in systemdesign?
Hopefully there's a baseline, but it's usually a, it depends.
What is the role call for? Usually you can you can identify
a little bit of that in the job posting of how technical is this
(32:41):
technical program manager role? And don't, don't be afraid even
in like if you make it through the resume, you know, review
process, you're talking to the recruiter or the hiring manager
asking the question of, hey, I know this TPM role applies or
works in this domain and like this is what the job description
(33:01):
says. Is there anything else you can
tell me about the technical expectations for this role so I
can better prepare and pulling more of that information out
could be helpful? Yeah, if you're lucky.
Yeah, if you're lucky. I have to find a recruiter that
I was able to get that information for you.
I think that's that's fantastic.Once again, depends on on the
company depends on on all of that.
(33:22):
So I've been different situations like that, which is
interesting. But yeah, I think it's it's a
really strong point you you bring up about the the life
cycle. I think that's sort of the bread
and butter that you should have that understanding, should have
that, you know, comprehension, Ithink first and foremost.
And then you kind of have to look at the job specs and look
(33:44):
at where you are, where is your,you've worked in and things like
that. Your, your skills, get your
skills wheelhouse, I guess, and all that as well.
So technical aside, I guess I mean, what are, what are other
areas, I guess important for TPMS to be interviewed in like
stakeholder management? And, you know, I guess how do
(34:05):
you demonstrate, you know, that you are able to bring, you know,
clarity from chaos or handle, you know, competing priorities
and across team alignment questions and things like that,
You know, leadership without authority, you know, how do you
bring highlight those things, I guess, in your, your work?
I can do a step in to that like more aligning it with the
(34:25):
general like advice. So I think like most interviews,
when you see it through the interviews and everything in
this interview is about communication and talking.
What my advice, for instance, for applicants is as well like
no matter like if you want to demonstrate system design
without authority is that you use visuals for that.
And what you can always do in every interview, like if it's on
(34:46):
site, then you can use a whiteboard.
Or if it's like remote, then youcan also flash like, you know,
some, some online whiteboard without like hunching names.
And no matter if it's like influencing without authority is
quite hard to, to touch. But I like this whiteboard and
visual approach because this sticks with the interviewer or
(35:09):
at least with me like very much that people can draw a few
things and how they would do it,how they would structure that,
how they would do stakeholder management.
But I think the toughest one that you mentioned, Doran, is
the influencing without authority.
What we internal did is like we asked ourselves after the
interview, have I been influenced?
It's a very simple question is when you spend one hour with a
(35:31):
candidate, let's say on a systemdesign challenge, has the
applicant influenced you becauseyou have authority like you're
the hiring manager and has the person influenced you to in in
any kind of way? And this is where you can
directly after the interview, you can write that down as like
123 bullets. But this gives you a very good
insight. And you can only ask that
(35:52):
question a few minutes after theinterview when you still have
the last hour present. I would say sell toughest 122.
Sell me this pen, I guess. I don't know.
I really like that question. Has this candidate influenced
me? I'll have to use that in the
future. I'll add a little a bit more on
(36:13):
this of like, OK, non-technical,non AI related things.
Like one thing I always try and figure out in an interview is at
what scale has this person worked in terms of
organizational settings? And the reason I really look for
that is sometimes, most of the time in a TPM role, technical
program manager role, it's pretty large scale, right?
(36:35):
Like it's more than five teams, multiple organizations, like
there's a lot of stuff to orchestrate.
And sometimes there are are candidates that are trying to
get their career to go in that direction and and have had more
experience as a scrum master, for example, with one team.
And so while the candidate may be a very, very good scrum
(36:59):
master, it's really difficult toassess scale with them if
they've never had that scaled experience, right.
So asking questions around that of tell me about the times
you've worked cross functionallybeyond one team.
Tell me about a time you've had to work across multiple
organizations, whether it be engineering and legal and
(37:23):
security. Tell me about it.
You know, just trying to push onthat fact of like get outside
your own team. And even I've interviewed scrum
masters who have done a lot of that, who have have that cross
functional experience. They happen to be focused on one
team, but they start to get intothat larger scale coordination.
(37:44):
And I want to mention that because being a scrum master
does not disqualify you from this role.
It's a fantastic like prep role for ATPM, but pushing on that,
that concept of scale is really important to me when I do
interviews. What's, what's 1 subtle signal
that tells you that someone willthrive as a TPM?
(38:06):
You know, you mentioned, you know, people are scrum masters
and folks, you know, working different skills.
But is there, is there a subtle signal that comes to mind for
you guys that you can think of? When the interview turns into a
two way discussion, because I strongly believe that the
interview process in itself is always a two way St. and you
need to be aligned with the applicant, applicant with you.
(38:27):
And when an interview turns intoa discussion.
That's why I always have 15 minutes booked in my calendar
after each interview. Either like to sum it up or to
spend more time with a candidate.
This is a very strong signal andit turns into a discussion.
Yeah, I was going to say something very similar of when
it doesn't feel like an interview anymore or when I,
when I walk away from the interview and I'm like, you
(38:50):
know, the way that they handled that problem and that the way
they structured it, I wonder if that would work with this other
problem we're having over here, right.
Like they're able to share things where it's like, OK,
that's fantastic value add to this.
Domain and you've been influenced, I guess.
I've been influenced. They did it.
(39:11):
What do interviewers wish Canada's would stop doing?
Is there anything you can? I know we talked about AI and
kind of having AAI screen up. Where are you, you know, during
the interview process? Anything else that you think
interviewers wish Canada's wouldstop doing?
There's one thing that comes to my mind right away that I'll
just jump in and say deductions that are way too long.
That is 1. That is one thing that I I know
(39:33):
interviewer interviewees are excited and maybe a little bit
of nervous, but when an when an interviewee takes 10 minutes to
introduce themselves, it's really tough to to move forward.
That's a huge plus one. I would, I would also say that,
and if it's like getting in, if candidates tell station, station
(39:57):
by station or company by companyand what they have done.
I think my, my tip for that for,for applicants would be to, to
pick out certain impactful things that you have done.
And how do they fit into, into the job you're interviewing for?
Because it shows the interviewerin itself that you have read the
job description that you have prepared immediately from
(40:18):
minutes here on. And then you can also like be,
let's say, confident enough. And ask the interview like do
you want to know more or do you want a deep dive more?
Because you can assume nowadays that interviewers have read this
UV, at least in the preparation.As an interview you should do
that. Yeah, it's a good point.
(40:39):
I mean, yeah, I mean, your resume is there.
I mean, you shouldn't just read off, you know, resume anything
like that. For me, I think it's not just
the intro. I think throughout the interview
process, you should answer the questions, you know, sort of
customize it to the questions being asked rather than just
sort of being verbose and kind of going through, you know, half
your life story or anything likethat.
(41:00):
So I think it's being very strategic and scope scopeful, I
guess. And scopeful, a word I don't
know. Scoping scopeful, Yeah, you
know, it's straining. Yeah, yeah, I, I think, you
know, treating it, stop treatinginterviews like interrogations,
which hopefully the interviewer sets that up environment, sets
(41:22):
up that environment really well where it doesn't feel like an
interrogation. And, and what does that look
like? Well, the interrogation looks
like an interviewee thinking they just need to say all the
answers and then wait for the next question, say all the
answers, wait for the next question.
That that's, that is not the best method.
And Michael, like you mentioned,like when you know, it's it's
(41:43):
going well is when it is a discussion, you know, there's,
there's questions that they comeback with, they pause and they
say, OK, I think that that's answered the question, but do
you want to go deeper on that? Because I can.
Let's see where this goes. So that would be one thing to
make sure to stop doing is stop thinking and having the mindset
(42:03):
of this is an interrogation. I can't ask questions, I can't
pause because it's not what it should be.
Yeah, it's too transactional, I guess.
Yeah, transactional would be a good way to say it.
OK, well, we're we're, we're at time.
Yeah. It's been a great, great
conversation. And, you know, in closing
thoughts here, I'd love to, you know, if there's any advice you
(42:24):
guys can give to the, to our listeners here.
You know, it's tough, tough world out there.
And I was very competitive. But in terms of preparing for
interviews, you know, both, you know, or, or trying to the
emotional resilience side of it.And if you have any tips, you
know, please share them. What?
What are you guys parting words for you guys for our listeners?
Interviews are tough. They're really tough and they're
(42:47):
not just tough because the person on the other side of the
table wants to give you a bad day or make your life hard.
It's tough just because of like the market that we're in right
now. And sometimes you may interview
really, really well and that maystill not be a good fit for what
that team is looking for specifically.
And so it's really hard. But this is something that I've
(43:07):
tried to do in the past when I've interviewed is, is decouple
my interview performance with the result of the interview.
Now that, that sounds weird, butsometimes if I get feedback from
an interview and I, I seek that,sometimes I'm able to pick a
part like, OK, like these were the things that went really
well. They were looking for domain
expertise over here and I don't have that.
(43:28):
And so being able to, to pick myself up again and say, I
performed well in that interview.
It was not a match. I wasn't lucky, so I got to keep
looking and that's really hard. My thing is, is one thing like
reach out to peers to help you prepare for the interviews.
There's so much great resources out there.
And I think if you open LinkedIn, you can just type in
(43:51):
technical programmers and you find so much people who can help
you. And I will not also take the
chance like for instance, in this TPM community on slag,
there's like Elena who who drives mock interviews and just
doing a really great job. If you are in this situation.
And I can only recommend to joinone of the course touching on
different topics. And I think this also makes you
(44:14):
stronger like when preparing. But you can also when you have
found a job like give back to the community in helping on what
has landed. It's yeah, very profound yes and
thanks for the plug there. So yeah, if you go to TPM events
at org, there's you can get access to a slack.
I think this scored as well. So those are great great
(44:35):
feedback and great things for you guys to to take.
Yeah, it is a tough, tough you have to be resilient.
And you know, it's also keep on trying, keep on learning, keep
on keep on evolving, right from every interview you learn
something new, you learn to to calibrate and recalibrate.
And you know this many mock interviews as you can, you know,
reach, you know, reach into yourpeers, your colleagues or ex
(44:56):
colleagues or you know, folks like that.
So all right guys, well, thank you.
This has been a very insightful podcast.
All this is enjoy that and we'lllook forward to seeing you guys
all next time. And to you guys as well.
Michael and James have a great rest of the month.
Thank you, Doran. Thank you, Michael.
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