Majd questions

gistfile1.txt

I really enjoyed the conversation with Abdulhaq, he showed for his level a high degree of maturity and reflection, exceptional communication skills and also a very good alignment with our values. His ability to teach and explain complex problems to others will be an asset and I believe we can help him a lot in growing in his areas of improvements (mostly technical).
Given he's not from an engineering background, he might benefit greatly from the fundamentals part of our immersion program and he expressed excitement to dive into these topics.
He also expressed a desire to at some point explore other topics outside mobile and has previous experience in DevOps, so his versatility would also be an asset for us.

From a non-technical perspective I would see him at a solid L3.

One thing we would need to figure out are the relocation logistics to Tunisia with KPMG (working permit for Libyans is apparently not a problem but sth to verify)

    loves maths & computer science
    wanted to be an academic - computational sciences
    path: masters, PHD, then teaching
    switch to software engineering wasn't major change
    but research funding and university wasn't meeting his standards
    in his department lots of issues on administrative process - he started building a mini system to simplify the process
    that made him saw the potential of software
    joined Fintech startup in 2017 as software engineer
    very flexible, he jumped on iOS which wasn't there
    built the app in a couple of months
    humble approach: "my system is not really production ready" - in mobile it's much more experienced

Self-awareness, cultural fit
What do you think differentiates a great from a good software engineer?

    writing software in a way that it can be maintained for 20 years, in a very easy way
    so that any dev can join the team and be easy to onboard
    delivery - measure, make good estimates, be clear with the management
    organizing: how the team is managed and tasks are assigned
    try and make the whole team as outstanding as themselves - sharing info, helping, pairing

Self-awareness, growth mindset
What did you learn about yourself in the last experience?

    openness to learn anything - he chose the challenge in mobile, confirmed his openness to new things
    ability to learn quickly
    likes teaching a lot, sharing info, helping others - found out that he's good at this: team members were more open to ask him questions

What are areas where you would like to grow in over the next year? Where would you like most support if you were to start tomorrow? How do you stay up to date and learn?

    technical: algorithms & data structures (he's not from a CS background, focused less on CS basics)
    half-technical: usually teaching verbally, would like to start writing documentation, tutorials, potentially videos

Career vision:

    well-rounded in software engineering - staying in mobile for long-time will help him accomplish that vision
    frontend is less complex
    would like to gain professional experience in DevOps, Cloud, Backend
    he already has experience with Azure & GCP & Kubernetes

Self-awareness, growth-mindset, communication
Describe a challenge/problem that you've encountered in previous roles, and talk about how you worked through that challenge and what you've learned.
Biggest challenge:

    in company 2 main apps: he started one of them, the other one wasn't yet published but went through 4 developers
    there was no way that the code for the other app can be continued
    Actions:
    spoke to team lead around the challenges
    decided for a complete re-write
    half way through started doubting themselves
    took a lot more time
    challenge was in finding thos rhtings that weren't anticipated in the beginning
    decision making:
    if any of us leaves there is nobody who can touch this code, we can't add new things to it -> technical debt
    iOS behing Android
    things kept coming up
    solution: worked harder, stayed overnight, pulled it off
    design was always more tailored to Android

positive outlook

(Self-)leadership, communication, collaboration, delivery

Suppose you had an idea for a change to improve work quality but your team members were against any type of change. What would you do in this situation? Why? Who would you involve?

Leadership, communication, growth-mindset

Tell me about a time where you had to make a difficult technical decision. How did you go about making the decision and what was the result?

Collaboration, teamwork, conflict management
Describe a team experience you found disappointing. What would you have done to
prevent this?

    one team member didn't manage to do a task, asked for extension. were embarrassed to ask their fellows for help
    he joined in, tried to help them - 

In his culture age plays a role - people feel ashamed to ask for help
What he would do:

    try to encourage the team member that it's okay to ask questions
    he's a strong advocate for pairing - helped him to solve lots of issues -> he would always apply that
    another option: team lead looks at the task and decide carefully whether person is capable of doing it
    educate team members, not leave growth as sth optional

Imagine a situation where you feel a coworker has been disrespectful towards you. How do you approach the situation? What do you assume? Would your approach change if it wasn't towards you but another team member?

Tell me about an instance when you had to communicate a really bad piece of news to
your supervisor or team members or have a difficult conversation with a coworker. How did you handle it? What was the outcome?

Leadership, partner success, value delivery
Have you ever missed a deadline? If so, what happened? How do you make sure you’re staying productive and fulfilled at work and on track? What habits, tools or methodologies have you adopted?

    was an issue for him in the past
    pomodoro technique changed his life - he's not sticking to the original, constantly changing it
    doing sports
    staying healthy, sleeping well

Self-awareness, cultural fit
What is giving you energy and what is draining it?

What are values that you would want all your team members to live by?

    encouragement / appreciation, recognition
    giving advise in a constructive/good way

Is at the end of his contract
he's free to move

Overall I really enjoyed the conversation with Rim and see her as a strong edition to our team. She has already gained first leadership/mentorship experience, is active in the community and apparently a really strong programmer out of passion. She definitely shares our values and mindset and how we are thinking or team leads at Think-it (combining leadership with coding), which is her short-term career objective.
I think she will also benefit a lot from our environment wrt practicing more self-awareness and the "Think-it way of doing things" with regards to interaction with partners, personality development, career development and best practices. From her answers I don't yet see her as senior on the non-technical side considering our requirements for an L4 Team Lead. But I can see her getting there quickly. I would make her an offer with a L 3.3 or 3.4.

Pros:

    open mindset and value alignment
    strong programming skills and focus on problem solving
    good communication, though maybe sometimes a bit too anxious for a senior
    strong on knowledge sharing and open discussion/communication
    shared vision on leadership (though not very in depth knowledge we would require)
    focus on mentorship and coaching

cbb:

    she will probably need to be more proactive to thrive at Think-it compared to last company given higher partner stakeholder interaction
    answers were lacking some depth/details around non-technical/leadership topics
    potential for more self-awareness, but mainly due to her professional environment so far

She'll do great at Think-it :)

    likes to be active on community, writing blogposts
    sharing open source
    passionate about programming and software architecture
    studied maths, course on software programming
    when she started choice between backend and android, you can manipulate Android more, iOS more closed
    likes interfaces, can see what you're working on on the UI
    last company:
    last project lead android dev, assigning tasks, putting up architecture, code reviews
    communicated with client dev team

Vision:

    dynamic perspective
    near future: team lead, work more on architecture, team management but also still coding
    enjoying about team leadership: working on architecture, likes discussing and joint decision making, 

Leadership, Self-awareness, Cultural fit
What do you think differentiates a great senior engineer or engineering lead from a good one? What's your leadership philosophy/approach?

    empowering other developers, it's not about you, give responsibility to others
    mentorship is what she really likes
    clean code structure, using components efficiently
    every developer is a team lead on his/her feature
    making developers feel like they also have a say and power to influence

Leadership, business acumen, self-awareness
Other than good code, what separates a good from a great software project? Which of those areas do you enjoy taking responsibility for? Which not?

    Meeting client expectations, deadlines
    discuss with the client, bring in expertise to see what's possible, what's not, what are tradeoffs (design, functionalities)
    take into consideration the user of the app
    didn't have the chance to work on all requirements, rather in the development part of the role, rather focus on clean code
    communication with client

Leadership, Project Management, Growth Mindset
What kind of standards do you set yourself when you start a new project/collaboration? How do you check whether you are meeting expectations? Who would you ask, what, how approach the convo?

    Make sure to have clarity and alignment on deadlines (sometimes they are impossible so technical team needs to be involved there)
    design part: get a first understand on what the design is all about
    requirements - check which ones are possible which ones are not on mobile
    making things clear from the start, needs involvement of technical team
    tasks estimations, allocating people according to functionalities
    usually work with SCRUM, sprints, not always daily standups

Checking for feedback:

    focusing on meeting the milestone, checking if there are a lot of bugs in the code
    flexible
    evalauations with project manager
    being involved in the project, communication within the team and the PM,

(Self-)leadership, communication, collaboration, delivery
Suppose you find yourself in a new international environment, where you don't know the culture or best practices. What would you do in this situation? Why? Who would you involve? Now imagine after 4 weeks you get the feedback: be more proactive. What would you do with this?

    Understand the vision of the feedback giver
    Proactivity:
    implementing but also communicating about it, e.g. with backend team

Self-awareness, growth mindset

What did you learn about yourself in the last experience?

    still working on sharing and discussing technology, she has a space to do presentations, she really likes that
    started sharing with a bigger community on Medium
    you get more feedback from people
    -
    having the space:
    mobile team is really dynamic, culture of sharing and discussing
    place where they do presentation

What are areas where you would like to grow in over the next year? Where would you like most support if you were to start tomorrow? How do you stay up to date and learn?

    Leadership, self-awareness, growth-mindset, communication
    Describe a leadership challenge/problem that you've encountered in previous roles, and talk about how you worked through that challenge and what you've learned.
    Situation:
    a project in her old company with a 1M deadline, didn't work with sprints
    lot of developers said it's mission impossible
    first time working with the team, new environment for her -> mission in another country, multi-cultural
    was really fun, working with other people and cultures, esp food
    she had to make the architecture and also manage other developers in Sousse remotely, and working with the backend team
    Actions:
    hard working team, teamwork made it happen
    worked really hard, ovet-time to make the deadline
    were really proactive to make it happen
    communicated the missing parts to the PM, saying which parts they will change, why they need to change and what the tradeoffs
    Teamwork:
    clarity on a shared goal
    lots of communication, comfortably with one another
    good task management

Self-awareness, cultural fit

What is giving you energy and what is draining it?

What are values that you would want all your team members to live by?

    space to discuss and communicate changes etc
    being open to criticism

ideal starting date:

    1-2 months
    would like to hear our offer: 3k TND
    learned a lot from the process, really interested
    -