https://github.com/reiver/technical-director-interview-questions
Guidance for interviewers trying to hire a Technical Director (TD).
https://github.com/reiver/technical-director-interview-questions
interview interview-questions
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Guidance for interviewers trying to hire a Technical Director (TD).
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/reiver/technical-director-interview-questions
- Owner: reiver
- Created: 2021-07-22T20:20:20.000Z (almost 5 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2021-07-24T17:48:33.000Z (almost 5 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-04-09T09:46:40.259Z (about 1 year ago)
- Topics: interview, interview-questions
- Homepage:
- Size: 22.5 KB
- Stars: 0
- Watchers: 2
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
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Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
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README
# Technical Director (TD) Interview Questions
by [Charles Iliya Krempeaux](http://changelog.ca/)
This document provides interview questions for a **technical director**.
I.e., if you are trying to hire a **technical director**, then you could include these questions as part of your interview.
## What Is A Technical Director (TD)
What is a **technical director**‽
The unsatisfying answer is:
> A **technical director** (**TD**) is whomever a company gives the title of **technical director** (**TD**) to.
That's actually the accurate answer to that question.
BUT — that is not an answer many (probably most) people want to hear. So I'll answer a different but more useful question:
> What do I expect from someone I give the title of **technical director** (**TD**) to‽
Here is the answer to that question — what I expect from someone when I give them the title of **technical director** (**TD**):
> 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.
(You might be thinking — “ok, great; what does that do all those words mean in practice?”)
## Management Jargon
Let's get into a bit of management jargon —
(There is a reason I'm covering this, so bear with me.)
I always hated this language but — HR types often divide up people in a company into:
* resources, and
* overhead.
_Resources_ do the actual "real" work, _overhead_ don't.
**Supervisors** are _overhead._
**Administrators** are _overhead_.
**Managers** are _overhead._
**Leaders** are _overhead_.
**Directors** are _overhead_.
Having said that — this is a good segue into the difference between **supervision**, **administration**, **management**, **leadership**, and **direction**.
* **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.
* **administrators** — primarily concerned with process & paperwork & overhead tasks — filling out forms, reports, checklists, entering stuff into the TODO list, dealing with banking, etc.
* **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 & alignment, dealing with blockers, velocity, efficiency, etc; they also deal with recruiting, hiring, and firing.
* **leaders** — primarily concerned with the vision, culture, and inspiring and motivating people.
* **directors** — the person specifying what the goals, targets, objectives, and results are.
Having said that, I expect a **technical director** (**TD**) to be able to do all these activities.
## Features
Before 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:
* does the person seem smart?
* does the person seem internally motivated?
* does the person like technical things?
* does the person like technical things that have nothing to do with their job?
* can the person coach/mentor/teach the people on the team he is on?
* does the person let (some) other people "own" things?
* does the person understand _why_ it is important to let other people "own" things?
* does the person know who should be permitted to "own" things, and who shouldn't?
* does the person know how to forecast?
* does the person understand incentives?
* how susceptible is the person to the latest maangement & tech fashions?
*
## Interview Questions
### Question 1
How do you go about onboarding people?
### Question 2
You are on a cross-function team with a number of people, including a number of software developers, and you are the **technical director** (**TD**).
You are reviewing the code of one of the software developers.
Back when you were programming full-time, you tended to prefer to program your code in a certain style.
You notice that the software developer is formatting his code in a way that is different than how you would have done it.
What are you thinking?
### Question 3
You are on a cross-function team with a number of people, including a number of software developers, and you are the **technical director** (**TD**).
One 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.
Another 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.
The team has 8 software developers in total.
A new major feature needs to be added to the backend.
What happens next?
### Question 4
You are on a cross-function team with a number of people, including a number of software developers, and you are the **technical director** (**TD**).
One of the software developers has a task. You feel that it is taking longer than you might expect.
What are you thinking?
### Question 5
You are on a cross-function team with a number of people, including a number of software developers, and you are the **technical director** (**TD**).
The team is located in different locations across the world.
You just found out that _production_ system is down!
After 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.
You also realize that the only person who can deal with this is a software developer who is on the other side of the planet.
Why‽ — because he wrote that the system all by himself, and is the only one that can do a _production_ release for it.
For you it is 3pm, but for that software developer it is 3am, and a holiday.
What do you do?