Tell me about an outage or serious bug that affected your product. What was your role, and what changed afterwards?

What the interviewer is looking for

• This question tests ownership. Steps in during incidents and problems, owns follow-up actions, and drives lasting fixes rather than blaming others.
• What to bring out: Helps coordinate and communicate during the incident, drives a blameless review, and makes sure follow-up fixes actually get prioritised.
• Expect a follow-up like: Which follow-up action was hardest to get prioritised, and how did you do it?

Another way it may be asked: Think of a time something broke badly in production. What did you personally do during and after it?

A structure to follow: STAR, with the weight on Action and Result

1. Step 1

   Situation

   One or two sentences: where, when and what was at stake. Pick a real example you were close to.

2. Step 2

   Task

   What you personally were responsible for. Say "I", not only "we", so the ownership you showed is visible.

3. Step 3

   Action

   The two or three things you did and why you chose them over the alternatives. This should be about half your answer.

4. Step 4

   Result

   What changed, in your own measure of it, and what you would do differently. Only use numbers you can stand behind.

This is guidance on shape, not a script. Use your own real experience and facts; never invent details to fill a gap. See the STAR guide and answer frameworks.

Common slips

• Describing what the team did without saying what you did.
• Choosing an example with no clear outcome, or one you cannot answer detailed questions about.
• Ending on the action and skipping the result and what you learned.

How to practise it

Write two bullet points for each STAR letter, then say the answer aloud in about two minutes.

Related questions

• In simple terms, how would you explain what happens behind the scenes when someone taps a button in an app and their data loads?
• If an engineer told you a feature would take three times longer than expected, what questions would you ask them?
• Imagine two engineering teams disagree about who should own a shared service. How would you help them reach a decision?
• Tell me about a technical spec or requirements document you wrote. How did you decide what level of detail engineers needed?
• How do you decide how much of a quarter to spend on technical debt versus new features? Give me a real example.

Browse all questions