People

What is a structured interview?

Every candidate for a seat gets the same exercises and is scored against the same written rubric.

What is a work sample in an AI/ML loop?

A bounded task close to the job, such as reading an eval or debugging a retrieval result, scored on what the candidate did.

What is a scoring rubric?

A written description of what weak, solid, and strong look like for each exercise, so interviewers score the same thing.

What is a hiring debrief for?

Comparing written evidence from each interviewer against the bar. Seniority and volume do not add votes.

Why do interviewers write feedback before the debrief?

So each score reflects what they saw, before the loudest opinion in the room shapes it.

Why is 'not a culture fit' a weak scorecard?

It names no behavior from the exercise. A rejection should point at the work, or it often hides bias.

Why vary who sits on a loop?

A panel drawn from one background tends to reward its own instincts and score different ones as misses.

What do you do when loop questions leak to a candidate?

Void that loop and use a new set. The candidate's answers are no longer evidence.

What makes a fair take-home exercise?

A stated time limit, no special hardware, and a scope a working person can finish. Otherwise it selects for spare time.

What is a useful reference?

Someone who saw the candidate's actual work, ideally a manager or close collaborator, not a friend chosen for praise.

What is leveling a hire?

Deciding the role level from the scope of problems the candidate has owned and shown in the loop, not from years or title.

What can a manager promise in an offer conversation?

Only what is approved. A raise, title, or bonus that nobody signed is not yours to offer.

What is a 1:1 for?

Time owned by the report to raise problems, career questions, and early warnings that a status meeting will not surface.

What is a skip-level meeting?

A conversation between a report and their manager's manager. It is a check on the manager, not a breach of chain of command.

What is situation-behavior-impact feedback?

Name the moment, the observable behavior, and its effect, so the person knows exactly what to repeat or change.

Why give feedback in the week it happens?

The person can still act on it. Feedback first heard at the annual review is a surprise, not coaching.

Where does corrective feedback belong?

With the person, in private. If the team needs a rule, write the rule instead of a public scolding.

What makes praise useful?

It names the work and why it mattered, so the person and the team know what good looks like.

What makes a goal usable for a rating?

It names an outcome someone could see, with a date and a definition of done, not an adjective like 'proactive'.

What is a performance improvement plan?

A written, time-bound set of specific expectations with support. It should be passable, and judged only on what it says.

What is calibration?

Managers compare ratings across teams against a shared bar, so the same work gets the same rating.

What does rating everyone 'exceeds' do?

It hides the people who actually exceeded and makes the rating meaningless at calibration.

What do you do when a curve demands ratings the work does not show?

Submit what the evidence supports, and say where the curve does not fit. Do not invent low performers.

What belongs in a promotion packet?

Concrete evidence of operating at the next level: problems owned, outcomes changed, and who benefited. Not hours or GPU usage.

Why keep a running record of a report's work?

Memory fades and favors visible people. A record lets you submit evidence instead of stories.

What is staff-level scope?

A problem that spans teams or quarters and that the person shapes, such as an evaluation strategy or a base model.

How do you avoid rewarding only visible people?

Track who did the work and what it caught, and name the author when work is presented.

What is credit attribution?

Naming who did the work, in the room where the credit is given. Taking a report's work as your own trains them to hide it.

What is a bus factor?

How many people must be unavailable before work stops. A training recipe only one person can run has a bus factor of one.

Why name a second owner for critical systems?

So a retrain, rollback, or approval does not wait for one person's return.

What is a good first-week plan for a new hire?

A named buddy with time, a current system map, and one small real change they ship.

What makes a good onboarding buddy?

Someone with room in their week. The deepest expert may teach sessions but is often too loaded to own the week.

What is delegation?

Handing over the outcome and the decision, with context, and reviewing rather than redoing the work.

What is a manager bottleneck?

Work waiting on the manager, such as reviews or approvals. It shows the manager is still acting as the only expert.

What is psychological safety?

People can report a bad result, a wrong page, or their own mistake without fear of humiliation or punishment.

What is a blameless postmortem?

An incident review that asks what in the system allowed the failure, instead of who to punish.

What makes an on-call rotation fair?

Pages are shared across the team, with pairing for new people, so no one person is the permanent night shift.

What are common burnout signals?

Saying yes to everything, working past midnight, withdrawing in meetings, and a drop in care for quality.

Why not celebrate heroics?

Praising weekend rescues invites the next one and hides the planning failure that caused it.

How do you handle a technical fight that turned personal?

Stop the personal remarks, then make and write down the technical decision separately.

What is disagree and commit?

After a decision is made with a stated reason, people support it even if they argued otherwise, and reopen it only on new information.

What does a manager do with a harassment report?

Thank the person, write down what was said, and take it to HR. The manager does not mediate it alone.

What does a manager need for a medical scheduling request?

The constraint, such as hours that cannot be covered. Diagnosis and accommodation details go through HR.

What does a manager owe a report who shares something private?

Keeping it private. You can plan coverage without naming what they told you.

What is a stay conversation?

Asking what would keep someone, including the work itself, before or during an outside offer. You promise only what is approved.

How should a manager treat an internal transfer request?

Negotiate a handoff date. Blocking a move to protect a launch usually turns into a resignation.

How do you test whether someone wants to manage?

Give them real manager work, such as feedback, interviewing, and owning others' outcomes, before a title.

What does a manager do about unexplained pay gaps?

Bring the evidence to HR and ask for a correction, even if the manager did not set the bands.

Why write down what a good model change looks like?

People cannot meet a bar that lives only in the manager's head, such as which eval, rollback, and review a change needs.