Tell me about a time you disagreed with a technical decision made by a teammate or lead. How did you handle it?

behavioral · Junior level · general

What the interviewer is really asking

Assess whether the candidate can advocate for their view constructively while respecting the team's process.

What to say

• Describe the specific technical disagreement concisely — what decision was made and what alternative you saw.
• Explain how you raised your concern: did you ask questions, bring data, suggest a spike?
• Show the outcome — whether your view prevailed, a compromise was reached, or you deferred and why.

What to avoid

• Don't present the situation as the other person being simply wrong and you being right.
• Avoid saying you stayed silent to avoid conflict — that's a missed signal.
• Don't frame deference as weakness; explain what you learned from the final decision.

Example answers

Strong: My lead chose a polling approach for a status check feature; I thought a webhook would be more efficient. I drafted a quick comparison doc with latency estimates and brought it to our next 1:1. She explained infrastructure constraints I hadn't accounted for. We shipped polling with a plan to revisit — and I learned to ask about constraints before proposing alternatives.

Weak: I raised my concern once in a ticket comment, got no response, and just let it drop without following up.