You have a teammate who is not pulling their weight and the rest of the team has started routing around them. What do you do?
What they are really testing: They want to see if you diagnose before you judge, whether you go to the person before the manager, and whether you protect the team without destroying the individual.
A real interview question
You have a teammate who is not pulling their weight and the rest of the team has started routing around them. What do you do?
What most people say
drag me
“Honestly, I would just pick up the slack myself. It is faster than dealing with it and the work still gets done.”
Absorbing the gap hides the problem, punishes the reliable people, and guarantees it repeats next quarter.
The follow-ups they ask next
What if it turned out to be genuine underperformance?
Then you say it clearly, set a dated expectation, and hand it to the manager with evidence.
Is this not your manager's job, not yours?
The manager owns the decision. You own telling the truth early and kindly.
How do you keep the rest of the team from resenting them?
Make the load visible in the sprint so it stops looking like unfairness.
What the interviewer is listening for
- Looks for invisible work before assuming laziness
- Goes to the person before going to the manager
- Sets a clear, dated expectation instead of hinting
- Escalates with evidence and dates, never with adjectives
What sinks the answer
- Silently absorbs the work and lets the problem rot
- Goes straight to the manager to complain
- Talks about the person's character rather than their output
- Has no line at all, so nothing ever changes
If you genuinely do not know
Say this instead of freezing. Reasoning out loud from what you do know beats silence every single time, and a good interviewer is listening for exactly that.
“I have not managed this situation directly, but here is how I would reason about it. I would start by assuming there is an explanation I cannot see, so I would ask what their week actually looks like before I ...”
Keep going with behavioural
Foundation
Tell me about a time you had to learn a new technology quickly. How did you go about it?
Foundation
So, why cloud? You have not worked in cloud before, so walk me through what actually pulled you here.
Foundation
Why are you leaving your current job?
Foundation
Tell me about a time you noticed something was broken, wasteful or risky, and nobody seemed to own it. What did you actually do?
Junior
You join a team and inherit a service with no documentation and the original author has left. Walk me through your first week.
Junior
Describe a time you were blocked and there was genuinely nobody available to ask. What did you do?
Knowing the answer is not the same as recalling it under pressure
Sign in to send the questions you fumble to spaced recall, so they come back right before you would forget them, and learn the concepts behind them with hands-on labs.
Start free