| I have a framework now that I’ve been developing based on my time at AWS. I’m now at a company where I’m building out an “application modernization” practice. It’s based on the Leadership Principles at Amazon. Not that Amazon is a great place to work in practice (I just got Anazoned two months ago). But they talk good game. https://managementconsulted.com/amazon-leadership-principles... I have a sticky note of the LPs I care about. A lot of times when I just ask a generic “tell me about yourself” question, they will talk about their experience and I can just ask them more details around their project that let’s me get the information I want. Other times, I have to specifically pull out my questions. For instance, I really care about having someone who is willing to speak up in meetings and is willing to express their opinions and even someone who is willing to tell me they think I’m wrong. I speak very authoritatively about my areas of expertise. But I always try to emphasize “strong opinions weakly held”. In LPs terms it’s called “Have backbone disagree and commit”. My favorite question for that is “Say I’m your manager and you are in the meeting with me , the CTO and other managers and we come up with an idea that you think is completely stupid. What would you do?” And that starts an entire conversation. I’ve given a thumbs down to people who give me an answer that I don’t think is a fit for what I’m looking for. I love for people to give me feedback and I hire people who help my team fill in technical gaps. I need people to speak up |