Lesson 6: Technical questions (10 Days- Cracking PM Interview Course)
🚀 Let's begin today’s class.
Today we are going to look at the Technical Question type.
So, what do these kinds of questions evaluate?
Technical questions in product management interviews assess your ability to work closely with engineering teams, understand technical concepts, and make decisions about technical trade-offs. Even if you’re not expected to code, having a strong grasp of the underlying technology and systems is essential to communicate effectively with developers. Here, we'll explore common technical questions and how to handle them.
Now, let's practice an example:
🙋♀️ How would you improve the performance of a slow-loading website?
Let me give you a framework to answer this type of question:
Identify Bottlenecks:
“The first step is to analyze the slow components of the website using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or WebPageTest.”
Common bottlenecks include large image files, too many HTTP requests, or unoptimized JavaScript/CSS files.
Optimize Frontend Resources:
Compress large image files using formats like WebP and Gzip for text files (HTML, CSS, JS).
Minimize HTTP requests by combining CSS/JavaScript files and leveraging lazy loading for images and scripts that aren’t immediately needed.
Use Caching:
Implement browser caching to store static assets like images and stylesheets, so users don’t have to download them on every visit.
Utilize content delivery networks (CDNs) to serve content from servers closer to the user’s location.
Improve Server-Side Performance:
Optimize database queries to reduce server response time. Introduce database indexing and caching layers (e.g., Redis, Memcached) to improve speed.
Measure and Test:
After implementing improvements, run performance tests again to verify the speed gains.
Key Insights:
Show a broad understanding of front-end optimization (minimizing resources, lazy loading) and back-end solutions (database optimization, server performance).
Other questions in this section can be along these lines:
Explain how you would design a scalable messaging system.
How would you design a mobile app for a smart thermostat?
Explain the difference between relational and NoSQL databases.
How would you manage a technical debt problem in a growing product?
How would you ensure data security for a new product?
Explain how you would design a recommendation engine for an e-commerce site.
How would you handle system downtime for a high-traffic application?
How would you design a payment system for an e-commerce platform?
Explain how you would build a search functionality for a large-scale website.
📗 We have discussed each of these questions in detail in our “The PM Interview Book”. You can purchase the ebook here -
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🙌 See you tomorrow for the next lesson on Estimation questions.
Happy PMing,
Balaji Rao