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1
Step 1: set context. Describe the highest level mission and business goal of the product. You'll derive your goal setting metrics from this. Discuss your different user types and which are core vs growth areas.
Step 2: go broad. Propose a few candidate high level metrics that could illustrate progress towards the mission. Discuss flaws and pros/cons with each metric, and ways to mitigate the downsides.
Step 3: converge. Select the final choice of key metric, and describe a process and secondary metrics that you could use to prevent "overfitting" to the metric.
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Practice question: how would you measure success for Facebook Newsfeed?
Overall Score
Answer
Interviewer take away
1
1 - strong no 😡
This is a tough one. Success is many things to many people. The product is used by so many people in so many ways. It’s such a big thing. I’d probably pick number of users because that shows that it’s working.
A bit rambling ( style not ideal). Then a very ambiguous answer. Is “number of users” active users? Monthly, weekly, daily? Why that metric and not something else? What is the point of the product to begin with? Missing
@💬 Communication
@💭 Structured thinking
2
2 - no 🙁
I would pick time spent because it’s a good simple metric.
This is a great example of how interviews are about the journey, not just the destination. This answer doesn’t sufficiently justify WHY this is the best option, or what else was considered. Moreover, there’s no governing principles that sit a layer above the metric. Lacking and .
@💭 Structured thinking
@🤔 Asks good questions
3
3 - yes 🙂
There’s a number of strong options depending on what we want to optimize for. For retention, we could pick daily or weekly active users. For depth of engagement we could pick time spent. For vibrant content ecosystem we could pick amount of content created or engagement on content created.
Strong with articulation of trade-offs and different options. But lacking a framework around product and company mission to inform which is the best choice. Doesn’t actually answer the question with their choice of metric. Still, shows nuance and structure.
@💭 Structured thinking
4
4 - strong yes 😍
Facebook’s mission is to bring the world closer together. For the Newsfeed, our mission is to connect you to news about people and things you care about. Based on this, some initial candidate metrics are: 1) time spent in the newsfeed (voting with your feet that you care about the content), 2) actions (reactions, comments, shares) as an indicator that you care enough to do something, or 3) creation (posts, stories) as an indicator of your sharing content to the newsfeed. If I had to choose one right now, I’d probably pick time spent because it captures time creating and consuming, and also crosses over across all content types (photos, videos, posts, items for sale, etc).
Starts with first principles and clearly stated goals - strong . Even though part of the newsfeed goal (connect to THINGS not just people) could be debated, it’s at least clearly stated and something the interviewer can followup on. Quickly into a few candidate metrics and has rationales for them. They pick one initial metric based on a few different axes (content types, interaction model).
@💭 Structured thinking
@🦅 Changes altitudes
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How might you “overfit” to this metric and try to cheat?
Overall Score
Answer
Interviewer take away
1
1 - strong no 😡
For users we could run big billboard ads all over the world to get more users.
Not a clear explanation of how billboard campaigns relate to getting more users or drive the metric. has too much ambiguity, and not enough . Also a very blanket strategy that seems to lack market awareness or user oriented approach (eg: which kind of users are you trying to get with billboards?), implying weak .
@💬 Communication
@💭 Structured thinking
@📓 Demonstrates experience
2
2 - no 🙁
For visits, we could just send more mobile notifications to get users to visit more.
While at first glance not a terrible answer, this lacks depth and trade-off discussion. How are we ramping up notifications - are we delivering more lower quality ones? If so, do we anticipate a sustained increase in visits or a one-time bump and then a decline as more users turn off notifications altogether because it has become too noisy? This answer needs more or to make it richer.
@💭 Structured thinking
@📓 Demonstrates experience
3
3 - yes 🙂
For time spent, I can imagine video driving the metric. There’s a world where our ranking algorithms push increasingly towards video, especially well produced video from bigger brands, that drive longer viewings. While this pushes our time spent metric up, it actually moves our use case away from connecting with friends to something more like Netflix.
Demonstrates a simple way to “game” the metric. Has a concrete example of what this could look like and explains how this is misaligned with the higher level mission established earlier. Good and harkoning back to the mission.
@🦅 Changes altitudes
4
4 - strong yes 😍
For the # posts created metric I selected, I could increase this with semi-automated low relevance posts. For example, we could integrate with partners like FarmVille and allow them to post on behalf of a user every action whenever it occurs. We could get notifications like “David just watered his virtual corn plant for the 5th time today.” These could 1000x the number of posts created overnight, but in fact dilute the value of the feed tremendously because this is low value content that may irritate many viewers. In fact, a sister team to mine did something like this at my previous company and it created a lot of downstream problems.
Demonstrates a simple way to “game” the metric. Has a clear concrete example of what this could look like and explains how this is misaligned with the higher level mission established earlier. from principles to examples. Closes it out with strong , leaving an opening for the interviewer to dig in more to their experience.
@🦅 Changes altitudes
@📓 Demonstrates experience
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Practice, reflect, repeat
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Question
How would you measure success for Facebook Newsfeed?
Practiced
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🥅 Goal setting
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Practice answer
Set context:
Go broad:
Converge:
Overall Score
💭 Structured thinking
🤔 Asks eigenquestions
🦅 Changes altitudes
📓 Demonstrates experience
💬 Communication
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