How You Prioritize When You Have a Large Amount of Work

In a behavioral interview for a software engineer role at Google, you are asked: if you have a large amount of work, how do you prioritize? Explain your approach and illustrate it with a real example. ```hint What gets dropped A prioritization story only convinces if something was deprioritized. Decide what you said no to or delayed, and how you told the people affected. ``` ```hint Whose priorities Consider whose goals the work serves and who should agree with the order you chose, not only how you would sort a list. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the work all mine, or is it shared across a team that I am coordinating? - Do the competing tasks come from one stakeholder, or from several with conflicting demands? - Should I describe a general method, a specific time, or both? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Clear criteria for ordering work, tied to team and business goals - Distinguishing urgent from important, and accounting for dependencies and teammates who are blocked - Explicitly deprioritizing, delegating or renegotiating scope and deadlines, with stakeholders informed early - A real example with its outcome, including what slipped and how that was handled - Sustainable habits: re-checking priorities as things change and protecting focus time, rather than simply working longer hours ### Follow-up Questions - Two stakeholders each say their request is the top priority. What do you do? - Tell me about a time your prioritization turned out to be wrong. How did you notice and recover? - How do you prioritize when a production incident lands in the middle of a deadline? - How do you keep unplanned requests from consuming your planned work?