{"id":21690833,"url":"https://github.com/reiver/technical-director-interview-questions","last_synced_at":"2026-02-21T09:01:21.384Z","repository":{"id":148331308,"uuid":"388587162","full_name":"reiver/technical-director-interview-questions","owner":"reiver","description":"Guidance for interviewers trying to hire a Technical Director (TD).","archived":false,"fork":false,"pushed_at":"2021-07-24T17:48:33.000Z","size":23,"stargazers_count":0,"open_issues_count":0,"forks_count":0,"subscribers_count":2,"default_branch":"master","last_synced_at":"2025-04-09T09:46:40.259Z","etag":null,"topics":["interview","interview-questions"],"latest_commit_sha":null,"homepage":"","language":null,"has_issues":true,"has_wiki":null,"has_pages":null,"mirror_url":null,"source_name":null,"license":null,"status":null,"scm":"git","pull_requests_enabled":true,"icon_url":"https://github.com/reiver.png","metadata":{"files":{"readme":"README.md","changelog":null,"contributing":null,"funding":null,"license":null,"code_of_conduct":null,"threat_model":null,"audit":null,"citation":null,"codeowners":null,"security":null,"support":null,"governance":null,"roadmap":null,"authors":null,"dei":null,"publiccode":null,"codemeta":null}},"created_at":"2021-07-22T20:20:20.000Z","updated_at":"2021-07-24T17:48:36.000Z","dependencies_parsed_at":"2023-05-19T19:30:30.462Z","dependency_job_id":null,"html_url":"https://github.com/reiver/technical-director-interview-questions","commit_stats":null,"previous_names":[],"tags_count":0,"template":false,"template_full_name":null,"purl":"pkg:github/reiver/technical-director-interview-questions","repository_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/reiver%2Ftechnical-director-interview-questions","tags_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/reiver%2Ftechnical-director-interview-questions/tags","releases_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/reiver%2Ftechnical-director-interview-questions/releases","manifests_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/reiver%2Ftechnical-director-interview-questions/manifests","owner_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners/reiver","download_url":"https://codeload.github.com/reiver/technical-director-interview-questions/tar.gz/refs/heads/master","sbom_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories/reiver%2Ftechnical-director-interview-questions/sbom","scorecard":null,"host":{"name":"GitHub","url":"https://github.com","kind":"github","repositories_count":286080680,"owners_count":29677881,"icon_url":"https://github.com/github.png","version":null,"created_at":"2022-05-30T11:31:42.601Z","updated_at":"2026-02-21T06:23:40.028Z","status":"ssl_error","status_checked_at":"2026-02-21T06:23:39.222Z","response_time":107,"last_error":"SSL_connect returned=1 errno=0 peeraddr=140.82.121.6:443 state=error: unexpected eof while reading","robots_txt_status":"success","robots_txt_updated_at":"2025-07-24T06:49:26.215Z","robots_txt_url":"https://github.com/robots.txt","online":false,"can_crawl_api":true,"host_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub","repositories_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repositories","repository_names_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/repository_names","owners_url":"https://repos.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/hosts/GitHub/owners"}},"keywords":["interview","interview-questions"],"created_at":"2024-11-25T17:34:00.514Z","updated_at":"2026-02-21T09:01:21.299Z","avatar_url":"https://github.com/reiver.png","language":null,"funding_links":[],"categories":[],"sub_categories":[],"readme":"# Technical Director (TD) Interview Questions\nby [Charles Iliya Krempeaux](http://changelog.ca/)\n\nThis document provides interview questions for a **technical director**.\n\nI.e., if you are trying to hire a **technical director**, then you could include these questions as part of your interview.\n\n## What Is A Technical Director (TD)\n\nWhat is a **technical director**‽\n\nThe unsatisfying answer is:\n\u003e A **technical director** (**TD**) is whomever a company gives the title of **technical director** (**TD**) to.\n\nThat's actually the accurate answer to that question.\n\nBUT — that is not an answer many (probably most) people want to hear. So I'll answer a different but more useful question:\n\u003e What do I expect from someone I give the title of **technical director** (**TD**) to‽\n \nHere is the answer to that question — what I expect from someone when I give them the title of **technical director** (**TD**):\n\u003e In a company with cross-functional teams, the **technical director** (**TD**) provides supervision, management, leadership, and techical direction to (at least) the software developers, and maybe also to other people on the team.\n\n(You might be thinking — “ok, great; what does that do all those words mean in practice?”)\n\n## Management Jargon\n\nLet's get into a bit of management jargon —\n\n(There is a reason I'm covering this, so bear with me.)\n\nI always hated this language but — HR types often divide up people in a company into:\n\n* resources, and\n* overhead.\n\n_Resources_ do the actual \"real\" work, _overhead_ don't.\n\n**Supervisors** are _overhead._\n**Administrators** are _overhead_.\n**Managers** are _overhead._\n**Leaders** are _overhead_.\n**Directors** are _overhead_.\n\nHaving said that — this is a good segue into the difference between **supervision**, **administration**, **management**, **leadership**, and **direction**.\n\n* **supervisors** — primarily concerned with compliance — ex: show up on time, do what you are told, don't slack off, do your job, obey these rules, etc.\n\n* **administrators** — primarily concerned with process \u0026 paperwork \u0026 overhead tasks — filling out forms, reports, checklists, entering stuff into the TODO list, dealing with banking, etc.\n\n* **managers** — primarily concerned with the team and the individuals in the team — the person actually getting people to actually do the work, helping them, teaching them, training them, coordinating them, dealing with flow \u0026 alignment, dealing with blockers, velocity, efficiency, etc; they also deal with recruiting, hiring, and firing.\n\n* **leaders** — primarily concerned with the vision, culture, and inspiring and motivating people.\n\n* **directors** — the person specifying what the goals, targets, objectives, and results are.\n\n\nHaving said that, I expect a **technical director** (**TD**) to be able to do all these activities.\n\n## Features\n\nBefore I get into the **interview questions for a technical director (TD)**, I'm going to talk about what I'm trying to figure out when I interview someone from a **technical director** (**TD**) role:\n\n* does the person seem smart?\n* does the person seem internally motivated?\n* does the person like technical things?\n* does the person like technical things that have nothing to do with their job?\n* can the person coach/mentor/teach the people on the team he is on?\n* does the person let (some) other people \"own\" things?\n* does the person understand _why_ it is important to let other people \"own\" things?\n* does the person know who should be permitted to \"own\" things, and who shouldn't?\n* does the person know how to forecast?\n* does the person understand incentives?\n* how susceptible is the person to the latest maangement \u0026 tech fashions?\n* \n\n## Interview Questions\n\n### Question 1\n\nHow do you go about onboarding people?\n\n### Question 2\n\nYou are on a cross-function team with a number of people, including a number of software developers, and you are the **technical director** (**TD**).\n\nYou are reviewing the code of one of the software developers.\n\nBack when you were programming full-time, you tended to prefer to program your code in a certain style.\n\nYou notice that the software developer is formatting his code in a way that is different than how you would have done it.\n\nWhat are you thinking?\n\n### Question 3\n\nYou are on a cross-function team with a number of people, including a number of software developers, and you are the **technical director** (**TD**).\n\nOne of the software developers created the entire backend all by himself or herself from scratch. This backend developer is very experienced, and has been a softtware developer for 15 years.\n\nAnother of the software developers created the entire fronend all by himself or herself from scratch. This frontend developer is also experienced, and has been a software developer for 10 years.\n\nThe team has 8 software developers in total.\n\nA new major feature needs to be added to the backend.\n\nWhat happens next?\n\n### Question 4\n\nYou are on a cross-function team with a number of people, including a number of software developers, and you are the **technical director** (**TD**).\n\nOne of the software developers has a task. You feel that it is taking longer than you might expect.\n\nWhat are you thinking?\n\n### Question 5\n\nYou are on a cross-function team with a number of people, including a number of software developers, and you are the **technical director** (**TD**).\n\nThe team is located in different locations across the world.\n\nYou just found out that _production_ system is down!\n\nAfter a bit of investigation, you find out that you think the problem can be fixed (and you can get _production_ back up), but you need to make a change to one of the systems, and do an emergency _production_ release.\n\nYou  also realize that the only person who can deal with this is a software developer who is on the other side of the planet.\n\nWhy‽ — because he wrote that the system all by himself, and is the only one that can do a _production_ release for it.\n\nFor you it is 3pm, but for that software developer it is 3am, and a holiday.\n\nWhat do you do?\n","project_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Freiver%2Ftechnical-director-interview-questions","html_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/projects/github.com%2Freiver%2Ftechnical-director-interview-questions","lists_url":"https://awesome.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/projects/github.com%2Freiver%2Ftechnical-director-interview-questions/lists"}