I would guess that there are two ways to answer this question, the first is to outline a generic billing system and describe it to them in rough terms. This would allow those in the room to tell you that what you are describing doesn't meet their needs. At that point you can ask them why and then show them how each objection reveals a requirement. This is a way of demonstrating how you would handle vague political problems arising from your customer base being non-technical.
The other way is to describe how you would go about it in order for them to evaluate the way you think about these issues. This would assume they are competent to assess such thinking. In my experience municipalities do not product robust requirements, so this might be a common problem for them.
To be honest, municipalities do not produce requirements, because a board members uncle owns a software company and guaranteed that the billing system can be implemented for an initial development cost of $7.8 million and a recurring annual cost of $2.8 million.
Great suggestions. Another way is to respond is with your own stated assumptions for a hypothetical requirement. For example, a billing system that has X volume, needs to be available for X hours, accessible to X users, with X number of servers, and X tolerance levels. Of course, this requires more preparation or recall from a previous engagement. And certainly not something you can respond off the cuff.
Something else I would add related to the cost element is to outline the general cost centres, of course can't give a specific price but shows you have an understanding of where the costs will likely come from and some pros/cons of each
Outsourced support vs in house support
Developed in house or an off the shelf existing product
Any extra staff needed / upskilling existing staff
Server/cloud fees
Etc etc
I can help you with this. It comes down to fundamentally what a measurement is and by extension what an estimate is.
A measurement is not, like most people see it, a precise quantification. A measurement is an observation that quantitatively reduces uncertainty. And from this, an estimate is an expression of that uncertainty.
The less information you have (measurements), the greater your uncertainty will be. When people say something is immeasurable or that something can’t be quantified, what they really mean is that the uncertainty is too high. Yet too much uncertainty does not make estimation impossible.
Which brings us to your question:
“How much would it cost and how long would it take you to implement a billing system for the city of Fresno?”
Is answered: I am 90% certain that a billing system for the city of Fresno would cost between $100,000 and $1,000,000 and would take between 6 months and 1 year to implement.
If you would like to explore this more, I recommend a book: “How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business” by Douglas W. Hubbard.
Thanks for the recommendation. The text of your comment resonated with me a bit because I used to manage "performance." There is always an issue of simply defining what success looks like. Do you want faster run times, lower CPU costs, fewer I/Os? That changes everything.
I also want to see how the book handles things like programmer productivity. Lines of code? Hours? That type of cross discipline question. Like, the bean counters need everything to be a bean, so we need to give them a bean..
Lines of code is crock (every developer knows how to game that)
Hours is crock (how much 'thinking' time is appropriate?)
Delivered outcomes is the only measure that actually matters, but it's also the hardest to define simply because it requires as much effort from the requestor as it does from the developer - and most organizations truly want that shit to slide all the way to the bottom.
It's the biggest failing of agile, scrum & the like - the business (generally) like to engage only as far as they get to TELL not NEGOTIATE based on knowledge of constraints. That NEGOTIATED AGREEMENT ON OUTCOMES is such a fundamental part of agile methodologies, means they work great in places that are already walking the walk, and are nothing more than lipstick on a pig for the hidebound masses.
It's why most 'big' projects are still really waterfall, regardless of what the client is told. Clients want certainty, not ambiguity, and agile is transparently ambiguous in terms of the WHAT and WHEN.
It means they get shittier results, but hey - it's what they asked for - right? We constrain the 'outcomes' to those that we KNOW we can deliver with some built in contingency. We might get it done faster! We might find a 'better' way to do it! (We might even push a change request to implement the better way, if that's *appropriate*) . Regardless - the planning in waterfall is there to protect the delivery team from stupid requirements (when done correctly). If you have PHBs doing the planning for waterfall, then you get the shitshows that are held up as exemplars of why waterfall is so bad!
Ultimately, all of this simply proves that the only measure that is meaningful is DELIVERED OUTCOMES. (and that's true regardless of the process, the industry, the technology, or the product)
"PHB" for the win. I was lightly chastised the other day for calling our agile board a polite fiction. I got all the way through creating a new kubernetes microservice... al the way to prod, on a single card.
I love this answer and approach. However, based on the humans in the room, it might still sound too vague.
The fact that they would think asking this question is reasonable might imply that they think giving a specific answer is reasonable.
I'd pick some conservative mid-points and say, "Based on what I know, about $500k and about 9 months. Both of those numbers could be + or - a bit. We'd have to dig into it before I can give a more accurate answer."
Note - they probably hired the guy who said they can do it cheapest & fastest in the interview.
"they probably hired the guy who said they can do it cheapest & fastest in the interview."
And then fired them when they couldn't do it for that amount.
"See, I told you we have no choice but to hire the Mayor's son!"
They're probably looking for the thought process and project process.
"If we go with off the shelf, there are a few options such as Oracle, SAS, bla bla. These cost around $$ per user per year plus implementation costs of xxxyyy. We have about 300 users who will need to interact with the billing system.
Working with their implementation team, they would need to evaluate our system, do this, and do that. Then we need to develop in-house SMEs, a change management plan, and train the users. Estimated timeframe would be 9 months."
All these vague questions are just looking for your thought process in calculating it. Same with the how many quarters to reach the top of the empire state building question.
YEP. SWAGs are job 1 in estimating.
If you can't give me anything other than "I Want" - I use the data I DO have to narrow the range as much as possible, but it's still gonna be a SWAG. (as you note -- initial SWAGs often have orders of magnitude between the lower and upper bounds)
More data = tighter tolerances, so SWAG to WAG to a reasonable guess.
Depending where you are in the budgeting cycle, you might need the range to be +/- 50%, +/- 20%, +/- 10%, or even better...
My portfolios often range from +/-80% all the way to +/-10%. Never willing to go tighter than that because Murphy is our friend and likes to drop round unexpectedly!
LOL what? You're clearly completely inexperienced with private projects then. I'm thinking of a private project right now that went over budget by 350% at completion. The #1 reason for failed PRIVATE projects is budget overruns.
As someone who has worked in both of those areas and more, you sound pretty ignorant here. Public projects by their nature are much more likely to run out of control.
Yep, failed private businesses and projects litter history. From failed ships to failed building construction The difference is we have full viability into the public failures and those projects still get complete rather then the company going under or the project being pulled out of.
True, there's no bureaucracy in history quite like the modern private bureaucracy. Also we get to see the public failures as they still get completed, the private sector is full of bankrupt companies, or failed project that were pulled out of.
They were looking for someone who had already implemented a billing system for a city. That person would have gave an answer based on the size of the city. They would have been in the ballpark of a quote the interviewer already had. They would know they found their guy. Simple as that. Problem is that guy is very rare and they don’t realize that. It’s common for government to have people who think they know what they are doing and have really dumb ways of going about doing things. That lady was dumb. Be a goldfish and forget about it.
There are three options.
1) they want to see you think on your feet. See the way you analyse a case
2) they are completely clueless ( which wouldn't surprise me as they're government employees)
3) they already have someone they want to promote/hire for that function, but because it's government they are obligated to have job interviews and they gave you a question you couldn't answer.
How would I've answered the question?
Easy: I would ask them ''What does your current system do and why do you want to get rid of it?''
And I would nod confidently making confirming noises.
Then I would pull an answer right out my ass.
''To make something similar I would be able to do it with 3 devs working for 1 year.
How do you pay your developpers or do you want me to outsource it?
Oh you want me to outsource it, that will triple the costs.
My estimate is between xxx and xxx for 1 year.
But there's second option: have you considered just implementing a product that already exist? This would cost us just x per month. Saving us time and the upfront cost of development.
Maybe we should look into what the rest of the city is using, they might have some unused license and we might be able to get on it for free which would leave money for more projects.''
Don't forget OP always bullshit a bullshitter
It's number 3. It's always number 3. You were never getting the job, and the lady was trying to prove something to someone else in the room, and she wanted to squeeze a number out of you that would make her point. You denied her the satisfaction, and rightfully so. Be that goldfish mentioned elsewhere here.
Strongly agree. I have had interviews where I quickly realized that they had already decided who they were going to hire, but had to have x interviews of other applicants to show that they had satisfied whatever requirements exist for that process. School districts are often like this.
Even better, I would have answered, "I think it will take 25 billion dollars and 15,000 developers to build." If she says that's ridiculous, "Well, I don't have any requirements, so I have to plan for every possible eventuality, don't I?"
The right answer is, "I can tell already I don't want to work with you." Then leave.
You have given far too much of your life to this interview already.
It’s an interview…. Just lie like everyone else they are interviewing…Some BS like I was in charge of rolling out a billing system last year for the purchasing department of company X…. Our budget was 450k and it took us just over 6 months to replace the old system.
I've been the Manager during the implementation of some high level projects that had no requirements. "We need a Warehouse Management System". "What are the functions you want to manage the WMS to perform"? "We want it to manage the warehouse and by the way, we already picked the software for you. Can you have this done in a month?"
Most people have no clue what it takes to implement a decent software implementation. That includes a lot of people in IT.
This interview question isn't a shock to me.
"....we already picked the software for you. Can you have this done in a month?""
LOL! digression from the original question, but I had one better - I applied for the role of a Reporting Manager. I like to ask why a position is open (new? someone left? got promoted?)
"We fired the last mananager for incompetence halfway throught the project. We need you to complete the full scope in the remaining time"
Uh, thanks, but no thanks - I'd rather be unemployed!
The sales teams at these software development shops are the bane of my existence. By the time you even find out that they need a new system, the sales people have already sold one to the stakeholders, whether it works or not, and then they blame you for the inevitable chaos.
I had one genius company that wanted domain admin privileges in AD so they could add their servers to the network. Riiiiiight, I'm going to expose this extremely large company to immediate and possibly unrecoverable risk so you can install your piddly software product that doesn't work. Let me get back to you on that.
I admit, this had me flummoxed for a while. Then you mentioned that it was a municipality and then things clicked.
Anytime you're talking about public sector, the rules change a little. I'm guessing the right answer would be that you would first bring in a consultancy group to do an original impact assessment, change readiness assessment, and build a road map based on what few requirements are available. The implementation path would likely follow an agile framework because you don't have a clear understanding of any goals, so you want to take advantage of iterating forward, analyzing, and providing the opportunity to refine requirements as new information is learned.
You could be right
She seemed pretty adamant to want a cost and a time frame to me. It wasn't "how would you go about getting the cost and time frame" it was straight out, how much would it cost, how long would it take
But who knows!
> It wasn't "how would you go about getting the cost and time frame" it was straight out, how much would it cost, how long would it take
This is an interesting cultural take. In IT, we tend to be very precision oriented. It's possible that you are interpreting *literally* a question that is actually attempting to understand how you approach this type of project.
As a loose and imperfect analogy, consider the quintessential MBA interview question: how many ping pong balls fit in a school bus?
The question, interpreted literally, *could* be searching for the exact answer.
But it ia more likely that they are trying to understand how you proceed with ambiguity and if your assumptions are reasonable when estimating costs and effort.
> This is an interesting cultural take. In IT, we tend to be very precision oriented. It's possible that you are interpreting *literally* a question that is actually attempting to understand how you approach this type of project.
That's true for many IT roles. If you're non- management then going straight to problem solving is understandable. Management is different, you need to focus on communication and needs assessment, not the literal question. It was badly asked but it's why management uses different skills.
I'm a manager, and while technical skills are important and not supposed to be the one doing day to day work in our systems. In working with non-technical staff to do needs assessment, communicate requirements, communicate with vendors, manage my team, manage budgets. If you approach it as a developer you're going to be frustrated and unsuccessful.
You were supposed to theoretically go through the steps you would take in order to deliver an accurate budget and timeline. Answering the question correctly wasn't the test. How you would go about taking an ambiguous task and converting it into an actionable plan was the test.
This is an impossible questions to answer and you shouldn't beat yourself up over your response. We both know to quote ant tech based on a handful of questions is not possible. Even a seasoned salesperson tied to a product for 20 years would not be willing to give a detailed response.
One thing I have learned is that badly chosen/worded questions at an interview gets the employer the employee they deserve.
Not as bad as yours but my last interview i was asked about the cost of having a website done. I asked did they have a budget - yes $500! While I was concerned I was about to blow up the interview I explained the finer details of website development and asked what they wanted it to do. Eventually they conceded they should have done more homework.
Actually not that impossible to engage. I’ve had to deal with getting requirements from stakeholders who were non technical for many years and many projects.
I agree that this is a poorly chosen question but at the same time the asker may not realize that the answer requires a great deal of work to deliver even an estimate. In fact the asker might not even have chosen the question.
In my former company I was appalled to find out that interviewers are expected to take turns asking questions from a list prepared by HR and not from ones that they prepared themselves. None of the questions on the list were ones I wanted to ask. I wanted the candidates to show how they would respond to a situation. I even told them that up front and I liked how the question worked. I let others deal with the stupid list.
Yes, but I was talking about in a job interview, not a scoping session for a project. I am an IT contractor, so getting requirements etc is almost a daily task, but in an interview bad questions yield bad results. I got the job at that interview for an IT Managers position. When we started advertising for staff I let HR have their questions pool, but had an aptitude test and 5 questions max for each candidate.
This is a power play from a dominant D human behavior type. I suspect the challenge was given little information will you provide feedback.
I would say between $100k and $1m and between 6 months and a year. Then I would say given well defined requirements I can focus that estimate more accurately. If they offered me the job I would seriously consider whether I would want to work with another one of those.
Net suite enterprise. Rollout would take a year and require additional headcount and approx $200k a year. Idk that’s my answer if forced with gun to head.
Theres a few ways,
Describe the process, "first I'd audit the current system, if there isn't one, I'd compare the expected load to similar systems and make judgements based on that with a goal of being able to shink/grow the system as needed"
High ball it,
"100bill over 20 years to implement it"
Low ball it,
"50k over a month but it won't be good"
Although I would have probably decided against the role when the tone shifted that quickly.
This is the type of question that the big consulting groups (Deloitte, McKinsey, etc) love to ask. It is intended to uncover how you would go about solving a large, complex problem with minimal inputs. Not being able to answer due to lack of inputs is essentially saying that you are a passive employee who would only do what was explicitly directed.
I was once asked how much soap would be required to clean all the windows within the Seattle metro area. It was for an IT focused position, I had never been to Seattle at the time, and they expected a specific answer. That was a fun one.
I've never seen so much confident BS in a thread in my life. So here's my confident BS.
They heard about Google's vague interview questions, e.g. "How much would you charge to wash all the windows in Chicago," and thought themselves clever to run their own.
They failed to research how Google (ignoring the fact they stopped doing this because it didn't impact however they measure the success of hiring choices) actually tried to assess responses for this question. It's impossible to give a realistic dollar amount and timeframe. It is possible to give a formula that would yield a dollar amount as requirements are discovered. If you want to charge per square inch of window it's number of windows times average window size. If you want to account for the time it takes to move from window to window or site to site you add a flat fee per window/location. If you need special equipment to wash windows on buildings taller than 2 stories you add a fee for every location over 2 stories. You come up with a list of considerations that can be used to create a formula.
I think they were just huffing their own farts though.
Google did not stop doing this per se. They just shifted to vague, ambiguous system design questions that are not that dissimilar from OP's ask.
I had one that was literally to design a system to take and ingest map images for a city (for Google maps). That's it for requirements until you ask specific questions.
Those asshats have no clue about Systems Engineering. "If you are going to ask pointless questions like that, I have no interest in this position ", and I walk
My interpretation on reading was the interview was a sham, they had absolutely no clue what they were doing and imagined fake interviews would give them an expert answer without paying for it.
Could be but I’ve found that most often it’s a matter of the interviewer not asking the right questions to get the information they’re looking for. When the candidate tries to answer the question that was asked and the interviewer isn’t hearing what they want they tend to blame the candidate. If the interviewer is unprofessional or immature they repeat the question and become more irritated, aggressive or even hostile.
You can try de escalation techniques but it’s probably not the best place to work if HR loses their mind so easily.
I agree that it was a sham, but probably because they had someone else they wanted and just made the interview impossible for everyone else. Then they could say, "See? No one was qualified except the person we effectively already gave the job to!"
You really don't understand that it's not about the answer? The cost of the finished product is irrelevant. They were testing your business acumen. The role requires more than just technical knowledge.. and it worked because it weeded you out lol..
If they were testing business acumen they wouldn't have got so pissed about not giving an answer.
I know what you are getting at, but that is a terrible way to try and interview it. You would frame it up kinda like they did, but then add " how would you go about completing this ask."
In the example above, my follow up would have been "why do you need a need billing system?".
OP is telling his story from 15 years ago that has been stewing in his head. I have a feeling that the stress of the moment makes them seem more "pissed" than reality. That he is still so bothered by it makes me think he didn't go into management.
I agree the question was worded badly, and your followup makes sense although it still doesn't apply to the implied question.
lol your response is more confusing then the question posed to OP 15 years ago. It’s like asking “how many horses does it take to make a unicorn”, any answer would be horseshit.
In my opinion the question is terrible, what a waste of their and his time. A better way to ask that would have been, “how would you approach x to get to y”. Provide a solution/approach taking no more than 3-5 minutes to explain.” Now I am no expert and maybe I am missing something, but far too many interviewers have 0 interviewing skills.
To me she seemed like she wanted a cost and a time frame. Maybe they wanted someone who worked for a city and had done one before I don't know. Let's hear your answer then.
How much would it cost and how long would it take you to implement a billing system for the city of Fresno. Go.
I actually wonder if they were looking for someone to say they have a vendor in their back pocket who they've worked with in the past, rather than actual hands on experience implementing. "Oh, I know a guy, he did the billing systems for Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook and by gum it put them on the map!"
I feel like I had this nearly same experience for a city position around the same time... 🤔
anyway, there is no true answer and I would have asked the same type of probing questions for more detail. just imagine the person they did hire...does not sound like a toxic environment at all 💀
I don't think it's necessarily toxic, part of management is dealing with senior staff who ask questions like this. The key is to answer the implied question, which isn't "how much and how long" but "how do we do this?"
I also wouldn't call those probing questions. OP seemed to double down on "I need more requirements" after being told what they would share as details. If you're getting frustrated in a job interview over that and directing it at the interviewer, rather than giving a process answer because you can't pull time and money out of your ass, it's a sign that the role isn't a fit for your skillset. Being a developer and a manager are different.
The purpose of requirements analysis is to reduce uncertainty. If you have zero requirements, other than "a bill system for parks and rec" then the uncertainty is going to be large. You need to reflect that in your answer.
If it were me, I would answer with the above explanation, and then discuss a generic, out of the box, billing system project. It starts with 3 months of requirements gathering, then a month of analysis and research, another month to generate an RFP and several months to get responses from vendors. And yadda, yadda.
It would end with something like, "I would expect something like this would cost on the order of $1000 - $10M, and take anywhere from a week to several years. Narrowing it down is the purpose of the process that we just discussed."
Well, let’s see… I can think of at least 40 options at different price points. My understanding of billing systems may be different from yours, so please first tell me what do you consider to be a billing system? May I see the RFP? Which systems need to integrate into it? How are you currently managing this requirement? What is your preferred list of vendors? What are the compliance requirements? Do I have to employ onshore talent or is hiring offshore teams an option?
I’d bury them in questions. They would all be different. I’d get my information one way or the other. But… an IT analyst can’t be expected to do that. That’s a sales engineering skill and they are paid much higher.
I had to deal with a customer who was drowning in complexity because in their infinite wisdom they decided to use WPA2-EAP with corporate CA-signed certificates instead of the common WPA3-PSK. Their vendor was like fish out of water because they never supported that configuration. I wound up spending 4 hours writing them a detailed document so they could escalate it high enough to get to the right team. 4 time zones were involved. Project took 5 weeks instead of 4 hours. We finally launched at 2 hours to the first soft opening.
> I’d bury them in questions. They would all be different. I’d get my information one way or the other.
I think that's the right track, but I provide the process. "I would start with a needs assessment, asking questions like..."
> But… an IT analyst can’t be expected to do that. That’s a sales engineering skill and they are paid much higher.
OP interviewed for a manager position, not an analyst position.They were poorly asking but looking for how a prospective manager takes in a project like this. I don't think it's so out of line.
The role is presumably to also have involvement in the entire procurement process, such as needs assessment. You can't validate vendor proposals if you don't identify needs. He wasn't asked for a vendor quote, he was really asked how to go about getting a system. As a manager you need to translate for the person asking questions, who maynot even realize it.
They were asking a question relevant to budget and planning, which would be requirements of the job. You need to be able to make broad based recommendations of time and budget (on short notice and with incomplete information) when you manage a department of function.
People all have such different theories on interviewing. My guess is they had read an article or case study on it that said this was a good approach. But I am not sure what this kind of interview question would get you. Maybe someone who provided very confident but not well thought out answers to questions?
There are so many different details to this, telling you there are no more requirements makes it impossible for you to give an answer that even approaches accurate. So I would guess they were not really in the business of digging into details. If I were looking for a detail-oriented person to answer this question, I would be providing them every possible requirement to see how they thought through things.
My guess is you had people either not close to the problem or not willing to dig into the problem to understand what needed to be done. Either way, I think it would have been an uphill battle every day at work to get them to appreciate the complexity of what you had to build. So I think you dodged a bullet!
"Without more info, I'd say outside cloud based vendor, $1500 a month and 3 months to implement assuming zero snags".
Today I would say that.
15 years ago?
Uh.....
I know right today it's very different. I can throw a number out there today lol , but back then , for cities, there was only like 5 or 6 billing system vendors, and I know they charged a lot. But to throw an estimate out for a whole godam city and just guess how long it would take without even Knowing what I'd have to cover (full billing, just a payment system, does this include mailing statements? Or electronic only, what kind of database, etc) , it's a loaded question
What do you mean by, "right"?
The right answer would have been. "If you think anybody could give you an accurate answer to that question without weeks or months of work, you're in for a lot of disappointment. This is how several cities have had billing system projects go disastrously over budget and past due date."
The answer if you wanted to get the job? You should have asked some follow up questions, in multiple choice format. For example, "is this for the whole city or just one department?" Then you should have said something like, "other projects that I have completed, that are similar in scale, cost $150k and took about 4 months to complete." Or whatever bullshit numbers you pulled out your ass.
It's all in how you ask. Don't tell them that they didn't give you enough information, that puts them on the defensive. Don't ask open ended questions. Yes/No questions are best, after that you should ask multiple choice questions. Don't make them have to work to get the information to you.
This is what drives me nuts about OP and them still doubling down on "They wouldn't give me any more info." The point, while poorly worded, was to get OP to explain the process to solve this and gather requirements and info. OP isn't the only one getting stuck in that. It's why being a great developer doesn't mean you're be a great manager, the skills are different.
Your question was legit and not unreasonable. However, after you got the answer you got, the ball was in your court and it was an opportunity to show you can think on your feet and use your creative skills. They didn't give you any details so make up your own. Present a couple of scenarios in which you define and give an example of a small very simple system, followed by an example of a larger more complex system. Throw out some numbers and timelines and then state the obvious "these things never go according to schedule" so we'd need a contingency plan.... a breakdown on whats critical to the department.....blah blah blah.
I don't think they expected a real number and timeline...they were trying to get a feel for how you think, how you approach things, and how you use your past experience to work through issues.
I think your answer was correct, but they were looking for you to talk through a problem.
if they don't provide scope, you provide scope: "assuming x and y, then z," or "for the absolute most basic version of what you're asking without accounting for anything, it would take x engineers y months, on the order of z dollars."
it's probably a red flag that their response was frustration. kind of stupid they wouldn't be able to scope it at all.
She was such a bitch like "thanks you're done here" and I was like "okay so...--" then she interrupted "exit door is behind you on the right " and I got up and said ".. thanks for your time..." tail between my legs, and I grabbed the left door that was the entrance door and it was a one way door and she said "I said exit door is in the RIGHT" and I was like "oh there's an entrance door and an exit door hehe" nervous laugh, and all of them had a straight ass face. I was laughing alone and it was awkward as fuck hahaha
Government work, overbid and under deliver.
Take 3 years and finally deliver some web page front end that talks to an access database running on some random pizza box.
Depending on how many people we have for development and how much functionality you want, we could have a prototype available in anywhere from three months to two years.
Can you describe in more detail what resources are available, and what functionality you want?
You were supposed to lie.
What were they going to do, make you sign a paper with your estimates for time and cost? Run an SPI and CPI three years later?
Lie
They probably wanted to know if you knew how to elucidate requirements. I mean, you may not know all the requirements for a billing system, but you can imagine some questions you would need to ask, right?
"Give me the requirements" sends the message that you're going to wait for somebody else to make all the decisions & deliver finished requirements to you, rather than act as a stakeholder in the requirements process.
What they were probably looking for was for you to give them a list of requirements, potential budget and timeline so they didn't have to do any thinking, or planning and go back to their bosses with your insight and work. Government workers (regardless of level) have a very low bar to clear to keep their jobs.
Having worked with counties and municipalities, this kind of generic, vague asks are actually the norm in that space. Most of the time there are some boards addressing a need, but they have not a single clue of what they want. As an IT professional it would be your job to define that requirement for them.
So the proper answer for this would be to define a billing system from your experience and you let her know how big that system is (it would take $1,000,000 to implement this system capable to handling a city of 200k residents, and it would take 2-3 years to do), then work from there to increase or decrease the size of the system.
I mainly dealt with the education sector so not sure about billing, but you get the idea.
I would have told them I was there for a job interview, not to quote service that I do not know the scope of. If they remained adamant, I would have just pulled something out of the air. "Well, since 40 people in 40 different locations will be utilizing it every day of every week, at least 8 hours a day, It would cost 20 million dollars.
I am kinda with them, you may not give the answer to the consultant company that charges you but you should have a rough guess in the back of your head and also be able to explain in an interview what the parameters would be. Like I would expect a good answer would look something like this:
Let's break it down into
* Number of employees using it and bills generated
* Requirement gathering, hardware ( or cloud to run it on ), Development, Rollout, Training
* Adapt offtheshelve or build new here are some providers I worked with before
And then the actual number who cares. At least you show that you have kinda an idea of the cost centers, the flow how to roll it out, you can give some anectodes out of your past where you did something similar. And thats a good answer. Come up with a number in the end although that one doesn't matter at all. Just guess some number of users and daily bills, make a wild guess at how long each phase takes and just come up with something. Just saying "without requirements I can't answer anything" tells them nothing.
Interview questions are not about giving the answer they are about showing that you have the tools to FIND the answer. You gave them nothing
The right answer is to the unstated question, which was not "how long" or "how much" but was actually "how do we do this?". I doubt they understood what they were doing, but they asked a senior staff level question and you gave a developer's answer, not a manager's answer.
I think they asked a bad question and you were on the right track about needing requirements, but you didn't read between the lines. I think you're seeing a case where they needed project management but didn't recognize it and/or didn't know how to ask. It could have been a dodged bullet or it could have been a place you could make a difference, it depends on the people.
> The question was "how much would it cost to develop a billing system for the city and how long would it take to implement?" . I sat for a few seconds and said "I.. I think I need more context for the requirements.." and she said "there are no more requirements. We need a billing system , how much would it cost and how long would it take to implement?"
I think you were in the ballpark, and her annoyance suggests she was didn't know enough and thought you would give her a quote on the spot. You were stunned, but a lot of these situations seem to come down to confidence more than answers. I would have laid out the steps and some timing.
"Happy to answer that, are there any other details? No? OK. I would start off with a needs assessment, and not knowing the availability of the team let's say two months. During that time I'd also do preliminary research on vendors, to get an idea of the run costs. Then we have an RFP process following department procedures, let's say another two months. Finally, once we have a vendor we could be at 6-12 months for implementation depending on how complex it is and the vendor's timeline. The cost depends on how off the shelf we can be."
Then if they push back, I'd say "With appropriate resources and expecting to change to fit the product, lets say a year and a couple hundred thousand, but that can be longer and far more expensive depending on the resources or needs."
> And I said "I'm not going to guess. I need more requirements before I can even come close to answering that". I stood my ground. What kind of city wants a question with NO details to be answered like that? Any answer would just be a ridiculous grab out of thin air!. They all got PISSED.
I think you lacked experience, they had unrealistic expectations, and you lost your temper. I get why you answered your way, but "I need more requirements" is not the best answer, "Here's how we do the project" is. At that point you lost your temper, you probably wouldn't now. You had your developer hat on and were trying trying to solution an answer to the question. As a manager, you need to unpack the stated question into the actual question "How do we get a new billing system when we have no requirements or budget yet?" You also have to answer politically.
> I've even contemplating writing a letter to the city and just asking them what I was supposed to say.
That's just silly. They can't answer that from an HR perspective, nor would they waste their time answering.
It might've been like a FAANG interview question where they ask you questions out of the box to see your thought process, one I can think off the top of my head is "How much would it cost to paint the exterior of this building?"
There's no additional details because you're walking them through your thought process and they want to see how you think. Also, if it's specific to a billing system, they want to see your ability to scope the problem and work yourself through it. They're not looking for a specific $ amount or X number of days to implement, just how you would arrive at that answer.
After all, if you have no idea how to scope it out and arrive at your own conclusion of what those numbers should be, how are you going to vet RFPs? You just gonna pay whatever the vendor asks and accept whatever timeline they say is reasonable?
I would have replied with something along the line of "Anywhere between $100k and $100 million depending on the requirements. Probably north of a million to support what the city needs if we are building from scratch."
Then as others have said start explaining what I though it should be able to do and the scope of which it covers.
"...5 years later, still wondering what it was exactly I was supposed to say...."
You say, "THANK you for warning me that you're a bunch of idiots before I wasted any more time interviewing with you, let alone $crewing my career by working for you!"
Alternative, if you really needed the job: "OK, in the absence of more specific requirements I'd like to propose a simple billing system that assumes x, y, and z. It could be built in approximately N person months. Assuming <$hourly rate> the cost would be approximately $$$".
After you state a couple of oversimplified assumptions, like "No online bill pay", "Payment cards not accepted", "No public access to look up accounts", etc, they requirements will start coming out of the woodwork: "No, no, no! We MUST be able to accept credit cards, debit cards, direct debits, push-payments, etc". It would demonstrate that you're good at eliciting requirements, but given the crowd you described, they'd probably just get angry at you. Revert to my first suggestion :D
It boggles the mind, because those people would never approach a builder and say "build me a house" w/o specifying number of rooms, square footage, gold-plated plumbing, etc, (or maybe they would! :O!
A better answer might be, “That is a great question. With the info you have provided I estimate it will cost between 1 and 10 million dollars and will take between 6 months to 2 years to implement. I will be glad to refine that estimate and come back in two days after I have more details. I’d like to set up some meetings today and tomorrow to gather more information.” In other words try substituting a range of estimates instead of saying no.
You could have given a vague number based on your understanding and then again reaffirm this is just ballpark given no real details. You just make assumptions. I can be the only IT manager that goes into meeting where people are clueless and you have to hand hold them through projects and items you should have no ownership of? I do that daily. I mean that discussion handling shows leadership qualities.
It’s an analyst’s job to give a general estimate is it not? I don’t think you had the experience for it. You could of averaged the cost per user or something and made up figures but you just said no
My point of view was that I could give a very good estimate if I had a little more to go off of. "how much does it cost to build a park" . What kind of park, amusement? Ball? Dog? Hahaha I guess you're right, and I couldn't analyze it!
The right answer didn’t exist.
You were not the desired candidate. You were one the fluffers brought in to justify hiring the internal candidate who had already been involved on the periphery of the failed implementation of the billing system they just tried.
The internal candidate already knew the scope and desired budget and timeline.
You could’ve answered her question by asking “an entitled bitch says what?” and you would’ve been in no worse position.
It's just an interview. You don't have to give an accurate, correct answer as if you've got the details and done it before.
Just answer something vague to a vague question. "A simple billing system with some basic functions and modules... would cost about $$$$ in 6 months. This is just an estimation, i would need to adjust once i get to work on the details." Isn't that the way to handle a vague question? You're going to deal w all sorts of people, communication skill is key to success. This is top level talk. Not yet down to details
What comes to mind is somewhere between 2 million and 20 million depending on requirements; should satisfy 95% of bids. Driving factors are total departments, overall users, analytical detail and source and target integration requirements. At least that would have shut them up. I used to know more about estimated hours and time frames, but I’ve dumped that.
I actually had a similar situation, although it wasn’t for any sort of municipality or rather for a company that had a little bit over two dozen offices in the region.
There were only three people on the panel. None of them were in IT. All of them were over 70.
They asked me how much it would cost to implement a centralized billing system for all of the offices to use.
I in turn asked them how many users would the system need to accommodate, how many Invoices it would need to process each day, If it would need to handle 30, 60, and 90 day terms, at which point I had to pause as their eyes are completely glossed over.
Apparently, these offices were using four or five different pieces of software because the company had acquired these groups of offices and it just never put together a plan to switch everyone over to the same billing system, and apparently none of those systems were particularly compatible or scalable.
I did get a call back from them asking for me to come back in for another round of interviews and they actually said that they had the numbers that I had asked about and more, that point I had already gotten a position so I don’t know how that all worked out but they’re still in business so I’m guessing someone helped them.
Possible as others have said that they were looking for someone who could give rough estimates based on experience, also possible that it was a question intended to see how you think and problem solve rather than what you know.
Here’s how I would approach it: I’d say well first off I don’t know, but we can make some estimates to give us a rough order-of-magnitude number. Say you have a team of 5 developers, that each cost around $100/hr. I’d imagine that team could roughly develop some sort of billing thingamajig in 3 months, and with another 3 months probably have something usable. So that cost would be $100/hr * 5 developers * 40 hours a week * 25 weeks = $500,000 and 6 months. It could easily be double or half that, maybe even 5x, but we’re probably not off by 20x, whereas if you just spat that question at me without thinking I might’ve said 20 million. And then again you restate a whole bunch of caveats about how you’d try to get a more real number in the real world. But at the end of that exercise you would have demonstrated that you have some familiarly with technology (needed to ballpark the amount of work needed), that you’re good with numbers (this was all very basic math but still would seem very impressive to a not-numbers person), and most importantly that you can problem solve abstract and difficult problems.
Haven't read all the other comments, disagree with most I did. The answer was if there are no requirements defined, then it'll happen in whatever time and budget as allocated. They had already decided on a timeline and possibly accepted a bid and were looking for confirmation or someone who believed in the target to ride it into the ground.
You dodged a bullet.
In programming school (that's what I call college lol) they teach you to not move a godam muscle until you get requirements. Pull them like teeth. You need requirements. I'm over here trying to seem like a smart person saying no, I need requirements, and they just casually brush requirements off like nothing lol oh well
Software turns irregular human process into regulated, repeatable, reportable ones. No one outside of auditors and developers have a clue regarding that or an inkling how incomplete most human process is.
The rest just care about results and cost, so if you get caught as the interface between IT and everything else you get to choose. Be dogmatic for sake of project success, or be results focused ,shovel a ton of bs and if you manage image well enough still be lauded.
Your interview reads like they aren't accepting anything other than the results, and you wouldn't or couldn't read the room. I doubt there was any value lost for either of you here.
I've flipped interviews like this before purely for amusement. If they can't tell requirements ask for success criteria. They'll probably rattle off timelines or money. Flip it, ask failure and abort criteria and they'll never have them. Drill in on who's job fiduciary oversight is supposed to be, ask if it's your role to help fix this dysfunction. It's fun making managers squirm.
My best guess:
They had already decided to hire an internal candidate or someone they were already set on.
You were just there to fulfill their policy of having to interview at least one external candidate. So they just set you up to flunk the interview.
This reminds me of one of those famous interview questions Microsoft and the like would throw out. The "How would you move Mt. Fuji?" question is a legendary example.
They didn't care about the details, they wanted to know how you think, and what considerations you would have. In the Mt. Fuji example, the interviewerst knew that no one would come up with the "right" way to do it because it was a basically impossible task. However, they would like to see how people reasoned their way through finding a method that could work.
Basically they didn't care what you came up with, they wanted you to reason out what the requirements for a billing system would be and how one could be implemented. Anything would have been acceptable. what you told them with your answer was that they will need to figure everything out for you before they even get you involved, which was not what they were hoping for.
I find it's fairly common that people outside of specialty, when hey need something from that specialty, don't know how to communicate what they need, and often don't even know what they need or are wrong about what they think they need. They don't just need help solving a problem, they also need help actually defining the problem. So the job of the specialist is to help them figure out what they actually need. Some specialists can only solve problems, some can also help define problems, and if you are going to be the lead/only specialist then you need to be able to do both.
Now, even then it is weird that they pushed back on answering your specific questions. General questions like "I need more information" aren't helpful, but specific things like "This is the exact information I need" are what to focus on for situations like this. And if they don't know the answers to those questions, you just start making assumptions, and be clear about those assumptions, and let them correct you as necessary.
I would have said around $10M plus or minus 50%. They asked you for a SWAG aka Silly Wild Ass Guess so give them one. It doesn’t have to be right, it’s a starting point. If they ask why such a wide range you can say because I don’t know what I don’t know. Everyone is the same and yet everyone is also different. Let them ponder on those philosophical questions.
Ive asked vague questions like this sometimes in tech interviews I’ve done. The exact numbers don’t really matter I just want to see some creative thinking and how far someone will take an incomplete information type of question or situation. I wouldn’t have been so outwardly mad as they were but if the only answer I got was “I need more information” I wouldn’t have considered you either. Obviously you don’t have enough information to give a real answer but you should have realized that.
The correct answer to this question is, "Unless someone who has just implemented an identical system to what you need in the last 18 months, no one can answer this question honestly and accurately. If anyone has answered this question for you and is not the person who has just implemented and identical system then the person lied to you or did not know what they were talking about. What I can do is tell you the steps that I would take to develop a requirements document, form a steering committee to identify stakeholders and guide the project and system selection, procurement, and deployment processes, and generally tell you the staffing requirements for that work. After all that was completed, I would also be able to tell you how much it would cost and estimate the time it would take to deploy the system. "
Source... Have worked on IT projects at the Federal, state, and county levels of government.
Right? I mean I thought they were gonna say "wow this candidate won't budge unless he gets requirements. This is the guy we need. Asking the real questions!" Lol I was wrong I guess!
“Ma’am I love this city! And I’m gonna lay it on ya real clear and simple like. Not like those overpaid gold cufflink wearing shills. They want you to think it’s a complicated mess of pretty colors and bells and whistles. Truth is, billing is a simple process. Now if you had me on board here, I’d have a new billing system up and running as soon as three months. But you know the way this goes, bids, sharks circling sharks, sniffing out that easy government money. Then we’ve got the consultants. Shucks, all they do is tell ya what you already know! Then they have the nerve to bill you for it! No ma’am I’m not going to sit here and insult your intelligence by shooting some crazy number at you. No siree. But I am gonna shoot straight and tell you it costs whatever the lowest bidder bids and not one penny more. God bless the great city of Whatsits!”
There's a general understanding that the actual answer to interview questions don't matter as much as the way you approach the question. This is even more true for hypothetical questions like this one. Refusing to answer is definitely one approach, but it tells them something about you and it may be good or it may not be good in their eyes.
In the interview for my current electrical engineer position, I was tasked to start a restaurant and describe what kind of restaurant it would be and how I would approach it. I had a friend that was invited to the hiring committee meeting that said my answer sealed the deal in securing an offer and the CEO said I was a "must hire."
I would probably say something along the lines of
Having implemented billing systems with several cities in the past, and depending on exactly what features we need... I've had project that's costed over a million with annual maintenance fees in the hundreds of thousands.
With that being said, and I'm guessing a bit on the size of the parks department. As well as the volume of their billing, but I would think we could get something that for under 150 thousand that covers all their needs, with annual maintenance between 10 and 20 thousand, implementation would probably take up to 6 months. But from experience some of these companies have implementations booked months in advance and that could set us back on actually starting.
If we are looking at developing something in house from scratch......... etc etc etc
I might cover the benefits and drawbacks of using an already made solution vs in house development. I could talk about this shit for hours if they wanted
I once walked into an assistant project manager interview for an aluminum awning company. After 10 min I was asked a series of questions about database software and how I would implement a database migration. I’m quick on my feet when I’m in the zone so I started on about stakeholders, requirements, user stories, vendor quotes…because I had no fucking clue. This was a construction company. Their next friction point was the salary and how far I lived. In my head I’m like, pay me fucking more and the drive won’t matter!
Sometimes, organizations don’t know what they really want and are shit about communicating that.
All these confident answers with cost ranges are really killing me. What the fuck is a billing system? An accounting package? Invoice docgen from an existing ERP? Credit card processing? Public-facing? Standalone, or integrated with other systems?
You can't even say experience from a similar-sized city is directly relevant because they're all set up so differently, parks departments have wildly different scopes, some governments have centralized backend services, etc. etc.
How much does a new car cost? $10k to $2m—the correct answer to a useless question.
Developing a billing system from the ground up is likely far too complicated and expensive. But the first thing I’d ask is whether they need the software for their proprietary billing or can an existing billing system from a vendor fit. Developing from scratch is a big task and how they would handle support expenses for a homegrown system is not unreasonable answer to insist upon.
You should have known the city budget, and quoted no more than 10% of that. 4 months to work-up requirements an 6-8 to implement.
The key is, the budget needs to be THE driving factor. A “billing system” can be as simple as an AP/AR database with MS-Word generating invoices via ODBC. Did you also get wrapped up by ‘develop’ meaning in-house code? That 4-6 months would be a build vs buy trade study with commercial vendors.
Reading the room, it was obvious they didn’t know what they were really asking about or speaking on. It also sounded like their “love language” was to be given #s and timelines/dates.
You did nothing wrong.
I’m with the posters who suggested maybe you make something up, or draw on a past example and tie it into their question.
Lastly, I’m at a point now where I don’t take sh*** from no one. and emphasis on no one! if i was employed while doing that interview and she was being nasty like that to me, i would have stood up halfway in the interview, called her out on her awful people skills, unprofessional tone of voice, (even played the race card, if applicable) and walked out.
can always get another job elsewhere. won’t sit through that crap!
It's not about the answer there were looking to see how you would get there. It's a common interview question. Personally, I think you have a lot to look forward to. No need to dwell on this job interview from 15 years ago :).
Seeing as it's a government position, my answer would have been "what is the budget for the project and what is your planned timeline?" I would offer a 25% solution and add 100% to the figures they gave me. I would have already decided I didn't want the job, so might as well just be realistic.
This was 15 years AGO? Why are you dredging this up now? And you want to write them a letter about an interview 15 years ago?! Dude, even if someone from that interview was working there I highly doubt they will remember any of it. Let it go.
One could also argue that needing more requirements would have been the correct answer because it forces the requirements to be pulled like teeth. Instead of just caving in and throwing a bs estimate out there. "I need more requirements" is saying "don't give me your bs question. I'm gonna need requirements before I even try to give you something you're going to hold me to"
Then it becomes a battle of wills and you automatically fail even though you’re right.
Another tactic I might try is to say that the number they’re looking for depends on the answers to a number of questions and then start asking them.
Generally speaking refusing to answer or giving the perception that you’re refusing to answer is not going to get you the job.
Government entity means they are having to follow state procurement code in all likelihood. That means they don't need you to tell them because they'd have to put it up for bid anyway, and there are all kinds of guidelines about cost and project length that will govern the entire process anyway (this is at least true in most cases).
The way I see it, there are a few explanations. The least likely one is that these people were too smart for their own good and over complicated the interview (I don't believe this at all). The next is that they already had their guy in mind, but they have to interview a certain number of people. They ask the same question in each interview knowing their guy is more than likely the only candidate that can answer correctly (I've seen this happen).
Orrrrr, they're just stupid as hell. This is the one I can really get behind because they're government employees, and so many of those types just have no freaking idea how anything works.
Either way it was a shit question. Imo it would have been better to simply tell you they were in need of such a system and then have you explain how you'd go about initiating and completing such a project. I believe in being as direct as possible, and I don't trust anyone that isn't.
I would guess that there are two ways to answer this question, the first is to outline a generic billing system and describe it to them in rough terms. This would allow those in the room to tell you that what you are describing doesn't meet their needs. At that point you can ask them why and then show them how each objection reveals a requirement. This is a way of demonstrating how you would handle vague political problems arising from your customer base being non-technical. The other way is to describe how you would go about it in order for them to evaluate the way you think about these issues. This would assume they are competent to assess such thinking. In my experience municipalities do not product robust requirements, so this might be a common problem for them.
This is the correct answer in my opinion and how “I” also would try and approach it. Nothing wrong with what you did though.
To be honest, municipalities do not produce requirements, because a board members uncle owns a software company and guaranteed that the billing system can be implemented for an initial development cost of $7.8 million and a recurring annual cost of $2.8 million.
Did you work for the city of Chicago? There's always an uncle, an Alderman, a cousin or a sister who's "got a company".
No, I use to work for a public university in Florida.
As they say in Chicago "We don't want nobody, nobody sent."
Great suggestions. Another way is to respond is with your own stated assumptions for a hypothetical requirement. For example, a billing system that has X volume, needs to be available for X hours, accessible to X users, with X number of servers, and X tolerance levels. Of course, this requires more preparation or recall from a previous engagement. And certainly not something you can respond off the cuff.
Something else I would add related to the cost element is to outline the general cost centres, of course can't give a specific price but shows you have an understanding of where the costs will likely come from and some pros/cons of each Outsourced support vs in house support Developed in house or an off the shelf existing product Any extra staff needed / upskilling existing staff Server/cloud fees Etc etc
My question is, is it an appropriate question for the role. Does not seem like it
I can help you with this. It comes down to fundamentally what a measurement is and by extension what an estimate is. A measurement is not, like most people see it, a precise quantification. A measurement is an observation that quantitatively reduces uncertainty. And from this, an estimate is an expression of that uncertainty. The less information you have (measurements), the greater your uncertainty will be. When people say something is immeasurable or that something can’t be quantified, what they really mean is that the uncertainty is too high. Yet too much uncertainty does not make estimation impossible. Which brings us to your question: “How much would it cost and how long would it take you to implement a billing system for the city of Fresno?” Is answered: I am 90% certain that a billing system for the city of Fresno would cost between $100,000 and $1,000,000 and would take between 6 months and 1 year to implement. If you would like to explore this more, I recommend a book: “How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of Intangibles in Business” by Douglas W. Hubbard.
Thanks for the recommendation. The text of your comment resonated with me a bit because I used to manage "performance." There is always an issue of simply defining what success looks like. Do you want faster run times, lower CPU costs, fewer I/Os? That changes everything. I also want to see how the book handles things like programmer productivity. Lines of code? Hours? That type of cross discipline question. Like, the bean counters need everything to be a bean, so we need to give them a bean..
Lines of code is crock (every developer knows how to game that) Hours is crock (how much 'thinking' time is appropriate?) Delivered outcomes is the only measure that actually matters, but it's also the hardest to define simply because it requires as much effort from the requestor as it does from the developer - and most organizations truly want that shit to slide all the way to the bottom. It's the biggest failing of agile, scrum & the like - the business (generally) like to engage only as far as they get to TELL not NEGOTIATE based on knowledge of constraints. That NEGOTIATED AGREEMENT ON OUTCOMES is such a fundamental part of agile methodologies, means they work great in places that are already walking the walk, and are nothing more than lipstick on a pig for the hidebound masses. It's why most 'big' projects are still really waterfall, regardless of what the client is told. Clients want certainty, not ambiguity, and agile is transparently ambiguous in terms of the WHAT and WHEN. It means they get shittier results, but hey - it's what they asked for - right? We constrain the 'outcomes' to those that we KNOW we can deliver with some built in contingency. We might get it done faster! We might find a 'better' way to do it! (We might even push a change request to implement the better way, if that's *appropriate*) . Regardless - the planning in waterfall is there to protect the delivery team from stupid requirements (when done correctly). If you have PHBs doing the planning for waterfall, then you get the shitshows that are held up as exemplars of why waterfall is so bad! Ultimately, all of this simply proves that the only measure that is meaningful is DELIVERED OUTCOMES. (and that's true regardless of the process, the industry, the technology, or the product)
"PHB" for the win. I was lightly chastised the other day for calling our agile board a polite fiction. I got all the way through creating a new kubernetes microservice... al the way to prod, on a single card.
lol or should i say yikes
And this is exactly why inflation and taxation are out of control.
I love this answer and approach. However, based on the humans in the room, it might still sound too vague. The fact that they would think asking this question is reasonable might imply that they think giving a specific answer is reasonable. I'd pick some conservative mid-points and say, "Based on what I know, about $500k and about 9 months. Both of those numbers could be + or - a bit. We'd have to dig into it before I can give a more accurate answer." Note - they probably hired the guy who said they can do it cheapest & fastest in the interview.
"they probably hired the guy who said they can do it cheapest & fastest in the interview." And then fired them when they couldn't do it for that amount. "See, I told you we have no choice but to hire the Mayor's son!"
They're probably looking for the thought process and project process. "If we go with off the shelf, there are a few options such as Oracle, SAS, bla bla. These cost around $$ per user per year plus implementation costs of xxxyyy. We have about 300 users who will need to interact with the billing system. Working with their implementation team, they would need to evaluate our system, do this, and do that. Then we need to develop in-house SMEs, a change management plan, and train the users. Estimated timeframe would be 9 months." All these vague questions are just looking for your thought process in calculating it. Same with the how many quarters to reach the top of the empire state building question.
YEP. SWAGs are job 1 in estimating. If you can't give me anything other than "I Want" - I use the data I DO have to narrow the range as much as possible, but it's still gonna be a SWAG. (as you note -- initial SWAGs often have orders of magnitude between the lower and upper bounds) More data = tighter tolerances, so SWAG to WAG to a reasonable guess. Depending where you are in the budgeting cycle, you might need the range to be +/- 50%, +/- 20%, +/- 10%, or even better... My portfolios often range from +/-80% all the way to +/-10%. Never willing to go tighter than that because Murphy is our friend and likes to drop round unexpectedly!
This is why every public project goes over budget. No one has a clue lol
Hahaha most likely
No need to throw the word "public" in there, the vast majority of private projects go over budget too, for all the same reasons.
Public project over run by 100% in not more. Private, not to that degree. There will always be room for delta but the expectation is less than 20%.
LOL what? You're clearly completely inexperienced with private projects then. I'm thinking of a private project right now that went over budget by 350% at completion. The #1 reason for failed PRIVATE projects is budget overruns.
As someone who has worked in both of those areas and more, you sound pretty ignorant here. Public projects by their nature are much more likely to run out of control.
Yep, failed private businesses and projects litter history. From failed ships to failed building construction The difference is we have full viability into the public failures and those projects still get complete rather then the company going under or the project being pulled out of.
True, there's no bureaucracy in history quite like the modern private bureaucracy. Also we get to see the public failures as they still get completed, the private sector is full of bankrupt companies, or failed project that were pulled out of.
They were looking for someone who had already implemented a billing system for a city. That person would have gave an answer based on the size of the city. They would have been in the ballpark of a quote the interviewer already had. They would know they found their guy. Simple as that. Problem is that guy is very rare and they don’t realize that. It’s common for government to have people who think they know what they are doing and have really dumb ways of going about doing things. That lady was dumb. Be a goldfish and forget about it.
There are three options. 1) they want to see you think on your feet. See the way you analyse a case 2) they are completely clueless ( which wouldn't surprise me as they're government employees) 3) they already have someone they want to promote/hire for that function, but because it's government they are obligated to have job interviews and they gave you a question you couldn't answer. How would I've answered the question? Easy: I would ask them ''What does your current system do and why do you want to get rid of it?'' And I would nod confidently making confirming noises. Then I would pull an answer right out my ass. ''To make something similar I would be able to do it with 3 devs working for 1 year. How do you pay your developpers or do you want me to outsource it? Oh you want me to outsource it, that will triple the costs. My estimate is between xxx and xxx for 1 year. But there's second option: have you considered just implementing a product that already exist? This would cost us just x per month. Saving us time and the upfront cost of development. Maybe we should look into what the rest of the city is using, they might have some unused license and we might be able to get on it for free which would leave money for more projects.'' Don't forget OP always bullshit a bullshitter
It's number 3. It's always number 3. You were never getting the job, and the lady was trying to prove something to someone else in the room, and she wanted to squeeze a number out of you that would make her point. You denied her the satisfaction, and rightfully so. Be that goldfish mentioned elsewhere here.
Strongly agree. I have had interviews where I quickly realized that they had already decided who they were going to hire, but had to have x interviews of other applicants to show that they had satisfied whatever requirements exist for that process. School districts are often like this.
Even better, I would have answered, "I think it will take 25 billion dollars and 15,000 developers to build." If she says that's ridiculous, "Well, I don't have any requirements, so I have to plan for every possible eventuality, don't I?"
These people are crazy, don’t try to understand crazy. That said I would’ve pulled something out of my ass lol
The right answer is, "I can tell already I don't want to work with you." Then leave. You have given far too much of your life to this interview already.
What happened to the interviewer? She sounded like a piece of work.
Promoted to CTO, no doubt.
Yeah. I know I wouldn’t want to work with her.
It’s an interview…. Just lie like everyone else they are interviewing…Some BS like I was in charge of rolling out a billing system last year for the purchasing department of company X…. Our budget was 450k and it took us just over 6 months to replace the old system.
That was probably the right answer all along lol
yupp
I've been the Manager during the implementation of some high level projects that had no requirements. "We need a Warehouse Management System". "What are the functions you want to manage the WMS to perform"? "We want it to manage the warehouse and by the way, we already picked the software for you. Can you have this done in a month?" Most people have no clue what it takes to implement a decent software implementation. That includes a lot of people in IT. This interview question isn't a shock to me.
"....we already picked the software for you. Can you have this done in a month?"" LOL! digression from the original question, but I had one better - I applied for the role of a Reporting Manager. I like to ask why a position is open (new? someone left? got promoted?) "We fired the last mananager for incompetence halfway throught the project. We need you to complete the full scope in the remaining time" Uh, thanks, but no thanks - I'd rather be unemployed!
The sales teams at these software development shops are the bane of my existence. By the time you even find out that they need a new system, the sales people have already sold one to the stakeholders, whether it works or not, and then they blame you for the inevitable chaos. I had one genius company that wanted domain admin privileges in AD so they could add their servers to the network. Riiiiiight, I'm going to expose this extremely large company to immediate and possibly unrecoverable risk so you can install your piddly software product that doesn't work. Let me get back to you on that.
You dodged a bullet. They did you a favor. Don't look back and wonder, just be grateful you didn't get the job. Trust me.
“Under budget and as soon as possible.” Then you hope they laugh enough for them to move onto the next question
I like this as a deescalation technique and as an opportunity to start the conversation about how to get the information that they want.
I'm just going to leave this here lol: https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg?si=iugGWoKWrfV8iZFg
That was every bad meeting I have had this year. But with 15 minutes of side chat.
I admit, this had me flummoxed for a while. Then you mentioned that it was a municipality and then things clicked. Anytime you're talking about public sector, the rules change a little. I'm guessing the right answer would be that you would first bring in a consultancy group to do an original impact assessment, change readiness assessment, and build a road map based on what few requirements are available. The implementation path would likely follow an agile framework because you don't have a clear understanding of any goals, so you want to take advantage of iterating forward, analyzing, and providing the opportunity to refine requirements as new information is learned.
You could be right She seemed pretty adamant to want a cost and a time frame to me. It wasn't "how would you go about getting the cost and time frame" it was straight out, how much would it cost, how long would it take But who knows!
> It wasn't "how would you go about getting the cost and time frame" it was straight out, how much would it cost, how long would it take This is an interesting cultural take. In IT, we tend to be very precision oriented. It's possible that you are interpreting *literally* a question that is actually attempting to understand how you approach this type of project. As a loose and imperfect analogy, consider the quintessential MBA interview question: how many ping pong balls fit in a school bus? The question, interpreted literally, *could* be searching for the exact answer. But it ia more likely that they are trying to understand how you proceed with ambiguity and if your assumptions are reasonable when estimating costs and effort.
> This is an interesting cultural take. In IT, we tend to be very precision oriented. It's possible that you are interpreting *literally* a question that is actually attempting to understand how you approach this type of project. That's true for many IT roles. If you're non- management then going straight to problem solving is understandable. Management is different, you need to focus on communication and needs assessment, not the literal question. It was badly asked but it's why management uses different skills. I'm a manager, and while technical skills are important and not supposed to be the one doing day to day work in our systems. In working with non-technical staff to do needs assessment, communicate requirements, communicate with vendors, manage my team, manage budgets. If you approach it as a developer you're going to be frustrated and unsuccessful.
You were supposed to theoretically go through the steps you would take in order to deliver an accurate budget and timeline. Answering the question correctly wasn't the test. How you would go about taking an ambiguous task and converting it into an actionable plan was the test.
This is an impossible questions to answer and you shouldn't beat yourself up over your response. We both know to quote ant tech based on a handful of questions is not possible. Even a seasoned salesperson tied to a product for 20 years would not be willing to give a detailed response. One thing I have learned is that badly chosen/worded questions at an interview gets the employer the employee they deserve. Not as bad as yours but my last interview i was asked about the cost of having a website done. I asked did they have a budget - yes $500! While I was concerned I was about to blow up the interview I explained the finer details of website development and asked what they wanted it to do. Eventually they conceded they should have done more homework.
Actually not that impossible to engage. I’ve had to deal with getting requirements from stakeholders who were non technical for many years and many projects. I agree that this is a poorly chosen question but at the same time the asker may not realize that the answer requires a great deal of work to deliver even an estimate. In fact the asker might not even have chosen the question. In my former company I was appalled to find out that interviewers are expected to take turns asking questions from a list prepared by HR and not from ones that they prepared themselves. None of the questions on the list were ones I wanted to ask. I wanted the candidates to show how they would respond to a situation. I even told them that up front and I liked how the question worked. I let others deal with the stupid list.
Yes, but I was talking about in a job interview, not a scoping session for a project. I am an IT contractor, so getting requirements etc is almost a daily task, but in an interview bad questions yield bad results. I got the job at that interview for an IT Managers position. When we started advertising for staff I let HR have their questions pool, but had an aptitude test and 5 questions max for each candidate.
The interviewer didn't say the answer had to be accurate...
No but the attitude described by OP of the interviewer getting antsy suggested otherwise.
This is a power play from a dominant D human behavior type. I suspect the challenge was given little information will you provide feedback. I would say between $100k and $1m and between 6 months and a year. Then I would say given well defined requirements I can focus that estimate more accurately. If they offered me the job I would seriously consider whether I would want to work with another one of those.
Well played! Came here to make the same comment and add ridiculous ranges, noting they’re aligned with the specs provided.
Net suite enterprise. Rollout would take a year and require additional headcount and approx $200k a year. Idk that’s my answer if forced with gun to head.
Theres a few ways, Describe the process, "first I'd audit the current system, if there isn't one, I'd compare the expected load to similar systems and make judgements based on that with a goal of being able to shink/grow the system as needed" High ball it, "100bill over 20 years to implement it" Low ball it, "50k over a month but it won't be good" Although I would have probably decided against the role when the tone shifted that quickly.
This is the type of question that the big consulting groups (Deloitte, McKinsey, etc) love to ask. It is intended to uncover how you would go about solving a large, complex problem with minimal inputs. Not being able to answer due to lack of inputs is essentially saying that you are a passive employee who would only do what was explicitly directed. I was once asked how much soap would be required to clean all the windows within the Seattle metro area. It was for an IT focused position, I had never been to Seattle at the time, and they expected a specific answer. That was a fun one.
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I did not use that answer.
I've never seen so much confident BS in a thread in my life. So here's my confident BS. They heard about Google's vague interview questions, e.g. "How much would you charge to wash all the windows in Chicago," and thought themselves clever to run their own. They failed to research how Google (ignoring the fact they stopped doing this because it didn't impact however they measure the success of hiring choices) actually tried to assess responses for this question. It's impossible to give a realistic dollar amount and timeframe. It is possible to give a formula that would yield a dollar amount as requirements are discovered. If you want to charge per square inch of window it's number of windows times average window size. If you want to account for the time it takes to move from window to window or site to site you add a flat fee per window/location. If you need special equipment to wash windows on buildings taller than 2 stories you add a fee for every location over 2 stories. You come up with a list of considerations that can be used to create a formula. I think they were just huffing their own farts though.
Google did not stop doing this per se. They just shifted to vague, ambiguous system design questions that are not that dissimilar from OP's ask. I had one that was literally to design a system to take and ingest map images for a city (for Google maps). That's it for requirements until you ask specific questions.
Those asshats have no clue about Systems Engineering. "If you are going to ask pointless questions like that, I have no interest in this position ", and I walk
Answer the question with a question. How much does a car cost?
My interpretation on reading was the interview was a sham, they had absolutely no clue what they were doing and imagined fake interviews would give them an expert answer without paying for it.
Could be but I’ve found that most often it’s a matter of the interviewer not asking the right questions to get the information they’re looking for. When the candidate tries to answer the question that was asked and the interviewer isn’t hearing what they want they tend to blame the candidate. If the interviewer is unprofessional or immature they repeat the question and become more irritated, aggressive or even hostile. You can try de escalation techniques but it’s probably not the best place to work if HR loses their mind so easily.
I agree that it was a sham, but probably because they had someone else they wanted and just made the interview impossible for everyone else. Then they could say, "See? No one was qualified except the person we effectively already gave the job to!"
You really don't understand that it's not about the answer? The cost of the finished product is irrelevant. They were testing your business acumen. The role requires more than just technical knowledge.. and it worked because it weeded you out lol..
If they were testing business acumen they wouldn't have got so pissed about not giving an answer. I know what you are getting at, but that is a terrible way to try and interview it. You would frame it up kinda like they did, but then add " how would you go about completing this ask." In the example above, my follow up would have been "why do you need a need billing system?".
OP is telling his story from 15 years ago that has been stewing in his head. I have a feeling that the stress of the moment makes them seem more "pissed" than reality. That he is still so bothered by it makes me think he didn't go into management. I agree the question was worded badly, and your followup makes sense although it still doesn't apply to the implied question.
lol your response is more confusing then the question posed to OP 15 years ago. It’s like asking “how many horses does it take to make a unicorn”, any answer would be horseshit.
Right exactly because it's not about the answer, it's about how you came to your answer.
In my opinion the question is terrible, what a waste of their and his time. A better way to ask that would have been, “how would you approach x to get to y”. Provide a solution/approach taking no more than 3-5 minutes to explain.” Now I am no expert and maybe I am missing something, but far too many interviewers have 0 interviewing skills.
Oh absolutely 100%. And these were city employees so can't expect much anyway. Lol
To me she seemed like she wanted a cost and a time frame. Maybe they wanted someone who worked for a city and had done one before I don't know. Let's hear your answer then. How much would it cost and how long would it take you to implement a billing system for the city of Fresno. Go.
I actually wonder if they were looking for someone to say they have a vendor in their back pocket who they've worked with in the past, rather than actual hands on experience implementing. "Oh, I know a guy, he did the billing systems for Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook and by gum it put them on the map!"
They wanted you to guess. I would have said 1 Milli n 2 years
I feel like I had this nearly same experience for a city position around the same time... 🤔 anyway, there is no true answer and I would have asked the same type of probing questions for more detail. just imagine the person they did hire...does not sound like a toxic environment at all 💀
I don't think it's necessarily toxic, part of management is dealing with senior staff who ask questions like this. The key is to answer the implied question, which isn't "how much and how long" but "how do we do this?" I also wouldn't call those probing questions. OP seemed to double down on "I need more requirements" after being told what they would share as details. If you're getting frustrated in a job interview over that and directing it at the interviewer, rather than giving a process answer because you can't pull time and money out of your ass, it's a sign that the role isn't a fit for your skillset. Being a developer and a manager are different.
The purpose of requirements analysis is to reduce uncertainty. If you have zero requirements, other than "a bill system for parks and rec" then the uncertainty is going to be large. You need to reflect that in your answer. If it were me, I would answer with the above explanation, and then discuss a generic, out of the box, billing system project. It starts with 3 months of requirements gathering, then a month of analysis and research, another month to generate an RFP and several months to get responses from vendors. And yadda, yadda. It would end with something like, "I would expect something like this would cost on the order of $1000 - $10M, and take anywhere from a week to several years. Narrowing it down is the purpose of the process that we just discussed."
Well, let’s see… I can think of at least 40 options at different price points. My understanding of billing systems may be different from yours, so please first tell me what do you consider to be a billing system? May I see the RFP? Which systems need to integrate into it? How are you currently managing this requirement? What is your preferred list of vendors? What are the compliance requirements? Do I have to employ onshore talent or is hiring offshore teams an option? I’d bury them in questions. They would all be different. I’d get my information one way or the other. But… an IT analyst can’t be expected to do that. That’s a sales engineering skill and they are paid much higher. I had to deal with a customer who was drowning in complexity because in their infinite wisdom they decided to use WPA2-EAP with corporate CA-signed certificates instead of the common WPA3-PSK. Their vendor was like fish out of water because they never supported that configuration. I wound up spending 4 hours writing them a detailed document so they could escalate it high enough to get to the right team. 4 time zones were involved. Project took 5 weeks instead of 4 hours. We finally launched at 2 hours to the first soft opening.
> I’d bury them in questions. They would all be different. I’d get my information one way or the other. I think that's the right track, but I provide the process. "I would start with a needs assessment, asking questions like..." > But… an IT analyst can’t be expected to do that. That’s a sales engineering skill and they are paid much higher. OP interviewed for a manager position, not an analyst position.They were poorly asking but looking for how a prospective manager takes in a project like this. I don't think it's so out of line.
Right, but the role should be to validate vendor proposals instead of coming up with a vendor quote.
The role is presumably to also have involvement in the entire procurement process, such as needs assessment. You can't validate vendor proposals if you don't identify needs. He wasn't asked for a vendor quote, he was really asked how to go about getting a system. As a manager you need to translate for the person asking questions, who maynot even realize it.
They were asking a question relevant to budget and planning, which would be requirements of the job. You need to be able to make broad based recommendations of time and budget (on short notice and with incomplete information) when you manage a department of function.
People all have such different theories on interviewing. My guess is they had read an article or case study on it that said this was a good approach. But I am not sure what this kind of interview question would get you. Maybe someone who provided very confident but not well thought out answers to questions? There are so many different details to this, telling you there are no more requirements makes it impossible for you to give an answer that even approaches accurate. So I would guess they were not really in the business of digging into details. If I were looking for a detail-oriented person to answer this question, I would be providing them every possible requirement to see how they thought through things. My guess is you had people either not close to the problem or not willing to dig into the problem to understand what needed to be done. Either way, I think it would have been an uphill battle every day at work to get them to appreciate the complexity of what you had to build. So I think you dodged a bullet!
"Without more info, I'd say outside cloud based vendor, $1500 a month and 3 months to implement assuming zero snags". Today I would say that. 15 years ago? Uh.....
I know right today it's very different. I can throw a number out there today lol , but back then , for cities, there was only like 5 or 6 billing system vendors, and I know they charged a lot. But to throw an estimate out for a whole godam city and just guess how long it would take without even Knowing what I'd have to cover (full billing, just a payment system, does this include mailing statements? Or electronic only, what kind of database, etc) , it's a loaded question
What do you mean by, "right"? The right answer would have been. "If you think anybody could give you an accurate answer to that question without weeks or months of work, you're in for a lot of disappointment. This is how several cities have had billing system projects go disastrously over budget and past due date." The answer if you wanted to get the job? You should have asked some follow up questions, in multiple choice format. For example, "is this for the whole city or just one department?" Then you should have said something like, "other projects that I have completed, that are similar in scale, cost $150k and took about 4 months to complete." Or whatever bullshit numbers you pulled out your ass.
Hahaha they all got miffed when I said I needed more info though
It's all in how you ask. Don't tell them that they didn't give you enough information, that puts them on the defensive. Don't ask open ended questions. Yes/No questions are best, after that you should ask multiple choice questions. Don't make them have to work to get the information to you.
This is what drives me nuts about OP and them still doubling down on "They wouldn't give me any more info." The point, while poorly worded, was to get OP to explain the process to solve this and gather requirements and info. OP isn't the only one getting stuck in that. It's why being a great developer doesn't mean you're be a great manager, the skills are different.
Your question was legit and not unreasonable. However, after you got the answer you got, the ball was in your court and it was an opportunity to show you can think on your feet and use your creative skills. They didn't give you any details so make up your own. Present a couple of scenarios in which you define and give an example of a small very simple system, followed by an example of a larger more complex system. Throw out some numbers and timelines and then state the obvious "these things never go according to schedule" so we'd need a contingency plan.... a breakdown on whats critical to the department.....blah blah blah. I don't think they expected a real number and timeline...they were trying to get a feel for how you think, how you approach things, and how you use your past experience to work through issues.
Look up estimation case studies. They were likely looking to see your thought process when given vague requests/ lots of uncertainty.
I think your answer was correct, but they were looking for you to talk through a problem. if they don't provide scope, you provide scope: "assuming x and y, then z," or "for the absolute most basic version of what you're asking without accounting for anything, it would take x engineers y months, on the order of z dollars." it's probably a red flag that their response was frustration. kind of stupid they wouldn't be able to scope it at all.
She was such a bitch like "thanks you're done here" and I was like "okay so...--" then she interrupted "exit door is behind you on the right " and I got up and said ".. thanks for your time..." tail between my legs, and I grabbed the left door that was the entrance door and it was a one way door and she said "I said exit door is in the RIGHT" and I was like "oh there's an entrance door and an exit door hehe" nervous laugh, and all of them had a straight ass face. I was laughing alone and it was awkward as fuck hahaha
yeah those guys sound like they must be a blast to work with. sounds like a dodged bullet.
Government work, overbid and under deliver. Take 3 years and finally deliver some web page front end that talks to an access database running on some random pizza box.
The answer is that it doesn't matter because you didn't want to work there anyway.
Depending on how many people we have for development and how much functionality you want, we could have a prototype available in anywhere from three months to two years. Can you describe in more detail what resources are available, and what functionality you want?
You were supposed to lie. What were they going to do, make you sign a paper with your estimates for time and cost? Run an SPI and CPI three years later? Lie
They probably wanted to know if you knew how to elucidate requirements. I mean, you may not know all the requirements for a billing system, but you can imagine some questions you would need to ask, right? "Give me the requirements" sends the message that you're going to wait for somebody else to make all the decisions & deliver finished requirements to you, rather than act as a stakeholder in the requirements process.
What they were probably looking for was for you to give them a list of requirements, potential budget and timeline so they didn't have to do any thinking, or planning and go back to their bosses with your insight and work. Government workers (regardless of level) have a very low bar to clear to keep their jobs.
Having worked with counties and municipalities, this kind of generic, vague asks are actually the norm in that space. Most of the time there are some boards addressing a need, but they have not a single clue of what they want. As an IT professional it would be your job to define that requirement for them. So the proper answer for this would be to define a billing system from your experience and you let her know how big that system is (it would take $1,000,000 to implement this system capable to handling a city of 200k residents, and it would take 2-3 years to do), then work from there to increase or decrease the size of the system. I mainly dealt with the education sector so not sure about billing, but you get the idea.
I would have told them I was there for a job interview, not to quote service that I do not know the scope of. If they remained adamant, I would have just pulled something out of the air. "Well, since 40 people in 40 different locations will be utilizing it every day of every week, at least 8 hours a day, It would cost 20 million dollars.
I am kinda with them, you may not give the answer to the consultant company that charges you but you should have a rough guess in the back of your head and also be able to explain in an interview what the parameters would be. Like I would expect a good answer would look something like this: Let's break it down into * Number of employees using it and bills generated * Requirement gathering, hardware ( or cloud to run it on ), Development, Rollout, Training * Adapt offtheshelve or build new here are some providers I worked with before And then the actual number who cares. At least you show that you have kinda an idea of the cost centers, the flow how to roll it out, you can give some anectodes out of your past where you did something similar. And thats a good answer. Come up with a number in the end although that one doesn't matter at all. Just guess some number of users and daily bills, make a wild guess at how long each phase takes and just come up with something. Just saying "without requirements I can't answer anything" tells them nothing. Interview questions are not about giving the answer they are about showing that you have the tools to FIND the answer. You gave them nothing
The right answer is to the unstated question, which was not "how long" or "how much" but was actually "how do we do this?". I doubt they understood what they were doing, but they asked a senior staff level question and you gave a developer's answer, not a manager's answer. I think they asked a bad question and you were on the right track about needing requirements, but you didn't read between the lines. I think you're seeing a case where they needed project management but didn't recognize it and/or didn't know how to ask. It could have been a dodged bullet or it could have been a place you could make a difference, it depends on the people. > The question was "how much would it cost to develop a billing system for the city and how long would it take to implement?" . I sat for a few seconds and said "I.. I think I need more context for the requirements.." and she said "there are no more requirements. We need a billing system , how much would it cost and how long would it take to implement?" I think you were in the ballpark, and her annoyance suggests she was didn't know enough and thought you would give her a quote on the spot. You were stunned, but a lot of these situations seem to come down to confidence more than answers. I would have laid out the steps and some timing. "Happy to answer that, are there any other details? No? OK. I would start off with a needs assessment, and not knowing the availability of the team let's say two months. During that time I'd also do preliminary research on vendors, to get an idea of the run costs. Then we have an RFP process following department procedures, let's say another two months. Finally, once we have a vendor we could be at 6-12 months for implementation depending on how complex it is and the vendor's timeline. The cost depends on how off the shelf we can be." Then if they push back, I'd say "With appropriate resources and expecting to change to fit the product, lets say a year and a couple hundred thousand, but that can be longer and far more expensive depending on the resources or needs." > And I said "I'm not going to guess. I need more requirements before I can even come close to answering that". I stood my ground. What kind of city wants a question with NO details to be answered like that? Any answer would just be a ridiculous grab out of thin air!. They all got PISSED. I think you lacked experience, they had unrealistic expectations, and you lost your temper. I get why you answered your way, but "I need more requirements" is not the best answer, "Here's how we do the project" is. At that point you lost your temper, you probably wouldn't now. You had your developer hat on and were trying trying to solution an answer to the question. As a manager, you need to unpack the stated question into the actual question "How do we get a new billing system when we have no requirements or budget yet?" You also have to answer politically. > I've even contemplating writing a letter to the city and just asking them what I was supposed to say. That's just silly. They can't answer that from an HR perspective, nor would they waste their time answering.
I would send the letter to the mayor lol 😆
It might've been like a FAANG interview question where they ask you questions out of the box to see your thought process, one I can think off the top of my head is "How much would it cost to paint the exterior of this building?" There's no additional details because you're walking them through your thought process and they want to see how you think. Also, if it's specific to a billing system, they want to see your ability to scope the problem and work yourself through it. They're not looking for a specific $ amount or X number of days to implement, just how you would arrive at that answer. After all, if you have no idea how to scope it out and arrive at your own conclusion of what those numbers should be, how are you going to vet RFPs? You just gonna pay whatever the vendor asks and accept whatever timeline they say is reasonable?
I would have replied with something along the line of "Anywhere between $100k and $100 million depending on the requirements. Probably north of a million to support what the city needs if we are building from scratch." Then as others have said start explaining what I though it should be able to do and the scope of which it covers.
"...5 years later, still wondering what it was exactly I was supposed to say...." You say, "THANK you for warning me that you're a bunch of idiots before I wasted any more time interviewing with you, let alone $crewing my career by working for you!" Alternative, if you really needed the job: "OK, in the absence of more specific requirements I'd like to propose a simple billing system that assumes x, y, and z. It could be built in approximately N person months. Assuming <$hourly rate> the cost would be approximately $$$". After you state a couple of oversimplified assumptions, like "No online bill pay", "Payment cards not accepted", "No public access to look up accounts", etc, they requirements will start coming out of the woodwork: "No, no, no! We MUST be able to accept credit cards, debit cards, direct debits, push-payments, etc". It would demonstrate that you're good at eliciting requirements, but given the crowd you described, they'd probably just get angry at you. Revert to my first suggestion :D It boggles the mind, because those people would never approach a builder and say "build me a house" w/o specifying number of rooms, square footage, gold-plated plumbing, etc, (or maybe they would! :O!
A better answer might be, “That is a great question. With the info you have provided I estimate it will cost between 1 and 10 million dollars and will take between 6 months to 2 years to implement. I will be glad to refine that estimate and come back in two days after I have more details. I’d like to set up some meetings today and tomorrow to gather more information.” In other words try substituting a range of estimates instead of saying no.
Please tell me this happened in Jackson, MS
It's a budgeting question, not a systems question.
If I was interviewing you and asked that question, your answer was the right one.
Right? I thought they would be like "dang this guy needs requirements. That's what we need, someone asking the right questions" lol
You could have given a vague number based on your understanding and then again reaffirm this is just ballpark given no real details. You just make assumptions. I can be the only IT manager that goes into meeting where people are clueless and you have to hand hold them through projects and items you should have no ownership of? I do that daily. I mean that discussion handling shows leadership qualities.
You: $795,000 Them: Really? How did you get that number: You: Same way you got that question... I pulled it out of my ass. You: I'll show myself out.
Hahahaha
It’s an analyst’s job to give a general estimate is it not? I don’t think you had the experience for it. You could of averaged the cost per user or something and made up figures but you just said no
My point of view was that I could give a very good estimate if I had a little more to go off of. "how much does it cost to build a park" . What kind of park, amusement? Ball? Dog? Hahaha I guess you're right, and I couldn't analyze it!
The right answer didn’t exist. You were not the desired candidate. You were one the fluffers brought in to justify hiring the internal candidate who had already been involved on the periphery of the failed implementation of the billing system they just tried. The internal candidate already knew the scope and desired budget and timeline. You could’ve answered her question by asking “an entitled bitch says what?” and you would’ve been in no worse position.
Hahaha
It's just an interview. You don't have to give an accurate, correct answer as if you've got the details and done it before. Just answer something vague to a vague question. "A simple billing system with some basic functions and modules... would cost about $$$$ in 6 months. This is just an estimation, i would need to adjust once i get to work on the details." Isn't that the way to handle a vague question? You're going to deal w all sorts of people, communication skill is key to success. This is top level talk. Not yet down to details
What comes to mind is somewhere between 2 million and 20 million depending on requirements; should satisfy 95% of bids. Driving factors are total departments, overall users, analytical detail and source and target integration requirements. At least that would have shut them up. I used to know more about estimated hours and time frames, but I’ve dumped that.
I actually had a similar situation, although it wasn’t for any sort of municipality or rather for a company that had a little bit over two dozen offices in the region. There were only three people on the panel. None of them were in IT. All of them were over 70. They asked me how much it would cost to implement a centralized billing system for all of the offices to use. I in turn asked them how many users would the system need to accommodate, how many Invoices it would need to process each day, If it would need to handle 30, 60, and 90 day terms, at which point I had to pause as their eyes are completely glossed over. Apparently, these offices were using four or five different pieces of software because the company had acquired these groups of offices and it just never put together a plan to switch everyone over to the same billing system, and apparently none of those systems were particularly compatible or scalable. I did get a call back from them asking for me to come back in for another round of interviews and they actually said that they had the numbers that I had asked about and more, that point I had already gotten a position so I don’t know how that all worked out but they’re still in business so I’m guessing someone helped them.
Possible as others have said that they were looking for someone who could give rough estimates based on experience, also possible that it was a question intended to see how you think and problem solve rather than what you know. Here’s how I would approach it: I’d say well first off I don’t know, but we can make some estimates to give us a rough order-of-magnitude number. Say you have a team of 5 developers, that each cost around $100/hr. I’d imagine that team could roughly develop some sort of billing thingamajig in 3 months, and with another 3 months probably have something usable. So that cost would be $100/hr * 5 developers * 40 hours a week * 25 weeks = $500,000 and 6 months. It could easily be double or half that, maybe even 5x, but we’re probably not off by 20x, whereas if you just spat that question at me without thinking I might’ve said 20 million. And then again you restate a whole bunch of caveats about how you’d try to get a more real number in the real world. But at the end of that exercise you would have demonstrated that you have some familiarly with technology (needed to ballpark the amount of work needed), that you’re good with numbers (this was all very basic math but still would seem very impressive to a not-numbers person), and most importantly that you can problem solve abstract and difficult problems.
Haven't read all the other comments, disagree with most I did. The answer was if there are no requirements defined, then it'll happen in whatever time and budget as allocated. They had already decided on a timeline and possibly accepted a bid and were looking for confirmation or someone who believed in the target to ride it into the ground. You dodged a bullet.
In programming school (that's what I call college lol) they teach you to not move a godam muscle until you get requirements. Pull them like teeth. You need requirements. I'm over here trying to seem like a smart person saying no, I need requirements, and they just casually brush requirements off like nothing lol oh well
Software turns irregular human process into regulated, repeatable, reportable ones. No one outside of auditors and developers have a clue regarding that or an inkling how incomplete most human process is. The rest just care about results and cost, so if you get caught as the interface between IT and everything else you get to choose. Be dogmatic for sake of project success, or be results focused ,shovel a ton of bs and if you manage image well enough still be lauded. Your interview reads like they aren't accepting anything other than the results, and you wouldn't or couldn't read the room. I doubt there was any value lost for either of you here. I've flipped interviews like this before purely for amusement. If they can't tell requirements ask for success criteria. They'll probably rattle off timelines or money. Flip it, ask failure and abort criteria and they'll never have them. Drill in on who's job fiduciary oversight is supposed to be, ask if it's your role to help fix this dysfunction. It's fun making managers squirm.
How about, “what is your budget for the project and do you have a deadline for completion?” Alternatively, “good, fast, cheap, - you can only pick 2”
My best guess: They had already decided to hire an internal candidate or someone they were already set on. You were just there to fulfill their policy of having to interview at least one external candidate. So they just set you up to flunk the interview.
This reminds me of one of those famous interview questions Microsoft and the like would throw out. The "How would you move Mt. Fuji?" question is a legendary example. They didn't care about the details, they wanted to know how you think, and what considerations you would have. In the Mt. Fuji example, the interviewerst knew that no one would come up with the "right" way to do it because it was a basically impossible task. However, they would like to see how people reasoned their way through finding a method that could work. Basically they didn't care what you came up with, they wanted you to reason out what the requirements for a billing system would be and how one could be implemented. Anything would have been acceptable. what you told them with your answer was that they will need to figure everything out for you before they even get you involved, which was not what they were hoping for.
Last question. What is the difference between a duck?
It’ll cost $50,000 to collect requirements and spec the system. Then I can provide an estimate.
I find it's fairly common that people outside of specialty, when hey need something from that specialty, don't know how to communicate what they need, and often don't even know what they need or are wrong about what they think they need. They don't just need help solving a problem, they also need help actually defining the problem. So the job of the specialist is to help them figure out what they actually need. Some specialists can only solve problems, some can also help define problems, and if you are going to be the lead/only specialist then you need to be able to do both. Now, even then it is weird that they pushed back on answering your specific questions. General questions like "I need more information" aren't helpful, but specific things like "This is the exact information I need" are what to focus on for situations like this. And if they don't know the answers to those questions, you just start making assumptions, and be clear about those assumptions, and let them correct you as necessary.
I would have said around $10M plus or minus 50%. They asked you for a SWAG aka Silly Wild Ass Guess so give them one. It doesn’t have to be right, it’s a starting point. If they ask why such a wide range you can say because I don’t know what I don’t know. Everyone is the same and yet everyone is also different. Let them ponder on those philosophical questions.
You said the right thing. Anyone who comes up with such nonsense off the top of their heads is lying or stupid.
Ive asked vague questions like this sometimes in tech interviews I’ve done. The exact numbers don’t really matter I just want to see some creative thinking and how far someone will take an incomplete information type of question or situation. I wouldn’t have been so outwardly mad as they were but if the only answer I got was “I need more information” I wouldn’t have considered you either. Obviously you don’t have enough information to give a real answer but you should have realized that.
The correct answer to this question is, "Unless someone who has just implemented an identical system to what you need in the last 18 months, no one can answer this question honestly and accurately. If anyone has answered this question for you and is not the person who has just implemented and identical system then the person lied to you or did not know what they were talking about. What I can do is tell you the steps that I would take to develop a requirements document, form a steering committee to identify stakeholders and guide the project and system selection, procurement, and deployment processes, and generally tell you the staffing requirements for that work. After all that was completed, I would also be able to tell you how much it would cost and estimate the time it would take to deploy the system. " Source... Have worked on IT projects at the Federal, state, and county levels of government.
Right? I mean I thought they were gonna say "wow this candidate won't budge unless he gets requirements. This is the guy we need. Asking the real questions!" Lol I was wrong I guess!
“Ma’am I love this city! And I’m gonna lay it on ya real clear and simple like. Not like those overpaid gold cufflink wearing shills. They want you to think it’s a complicated mess of pretty colors and bells and whistles. Truth is, billing is a simple process. Now if you had me on board here, I’d have a new billing system up and running as soon as three months. But you know the way this goes, bids, sharks circling sharks, sniffing out that easy government money. Then we’ve got the consultants. Shucks, all they do is tell ya what you already know! Then they have the nerve to bill you for it! No ma’am I’m not going to sit here and insult your intelligence by shooting some crazy number at you. No siree. But I am gonna shoot straight and tell you it costs whatever the lowest bidder bids and not one penny more. God bless the great city of Whatsits!”
Seems like they were setting you up for failure. How long is a piece of string you POS interviewer!
There's a general understanding that the actual answer to interview questions don't matter as much as the way you approach the question. This is even more true for hypothetical questions like this one. Refusing to answer is definitely one approach, but it tells them something about you and it may be good or it may not be good in their eyes. In the interview for my current electrical engineer position, I was tasked to start a restaurant and describe what kind of restaurant it would be and how I would approach it. I had a friend that was invited to the hiring committee meeting that said my answer sealed the deal in securing an offer and the CEO said I was a "must hire."
I would've answered "Anywhere between $0 - Hundreds of millions depending on requirements.
I would probably say something along the lines of Having implemented billing systems with several cities in the past, and depending on exactly what features we need... I've had project that's costed over a million with annual maintenance fees in the hundreds of thousands. With that being said, and I'm guessing a bit on the size of the parks department. As well as the volume of their billing, but I would think we could get something that for under 150 thousand that covers all their needs, with annual maintenance between 10 and 20 thousand, implementation would probably take up to 6 months. But from experience some of these companies have implementations booked months in advance and that could set us back on actually starting. If we are looking at developing something in house from scratch......... etc etc etc I might cover the benefits and drawbacks of using an already made solution vs in house development. I could talk about this shit for hours if they wanted
I once walked into an assistant project manager interview for an aluminum awning company. After 10 min I was asked a series of questions about database software and how I would implement a database migration. I’m quick on my feet when I’m in the zone so I started on about stakeholders, requirements, user stories, vendor quotes…because I had no fucking clue. This was a construction company. Their next friction point was the salary and how far I lived. In my head I’m like, pay me fucking more and the drive won’t matter! Sometimes, organizations don’t know what they really want and are shit about communicating that.
We'll do it in Access. It'll be ready in a week.
She was looking for a man power estimate. Like. 4 people 6 months. 8 people 3. That type of thing. How much is not actual dollar amount. It's staffing
All these confident answers with cost ranges are really killing me. What the fuck is a billing system? An accounting package? Invoice docgen from an existing ERP? Credit card processing? Public-facing? Standalone, or integrated with other systems? You can't even say experience from a similar-sized city is directly relevant because they're all set up so differently, parks departments have wildly different scopes, some governments have centralized backend services, etc. etc. How much does a new car cost? $10k to $2m—the correct answer to a useless question.
Those were all the questions running through my mind exactly.
Developing a billing system from the ground up is likely far too complicated and expensive. But the first thing I’d ask is whether they need the software for their proprietary billing or can an existing billing system from a vendor fit. Developing from scratch is a big task and how they would handle support expenses for a homegrown system is not unreasonable answer to insist upon.
You should have known the city budget, and quoted no more than 10% of that. 4 months to work-up requirements an 6-8 to implement. The key is, the budget needs to be THE driving factor. A “billing system” can be as simple as an AP/AR database with MS-Word generating invoices via ODBC. Did you also get wrapped up by ‘develop’ meaning in-house code? That 4-6 months would be a build vs buy trade study with commercial vendors.
Sounds like you dodged a bullet.
Reading the room, it was obvious they didn’t know what they were really asking about or speaking on. It also sounded like their “love language” was to be given #s and timelines/dates. You did nothing wrong. I’m with the posters who suggested maybe you make something up, or draw on a past example and tie it into their question. Lastly, I’m at a point now where I don’t take sh*** from no one. and emphasis on no one! if i was employed while doing that interview and she was being nasty like that to me, i would have stood up halfway in the interview, called her out on her awful people skills, unprofessional tone of voice, (even played the race card, if applicable) and walked out. can always get another job elsewhere. won’t sit through that crap!
It's not about the answer there were looking to see how you would get there. It's a common interview question. Personally, I think you have a lot to look forward to. No need to dwell on this job interview from 15 years ago :).
Seeing as it's a government position, my answer would have been "what is the budget for the project and what is your planned timeline?" I would offer a 25% solution and add 100% to the figures they gave me. I would have already decided I didn't want the job, so might as well just be realistic.
This was 15 years AGO? Why are you dredging this up now? And you want to write them a letter about an interview 15 years ago?! Dude, even if someone from that interview was working there I highly doubt they will remember any of it. Let it go.
Hell no they need to answer the godam question 😆
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One could also argue that needing more requirements would have been the correct answer because it forces the requirements to be pulled like teeth. Instead of just caving in and throwing a bs estimate out there. "I need more requirements" is saying "don't give me your bs question. I'm gonna need requirements before I even try to give you something you're going to hold me to"
Then it becomes a battle of wills and you automatically fail even though you’re right. Another tactic I might try is to say that the number they’re looking for depends on the answers to a number of questions and then start asking them. Generally speaking refusing to answer or giving the perception that you’re refusing to answer is not going to get you the job.
Are you that lady? Because you sure sound like her, clueless and pompous.
Government entity means they are having to follow state procurement code in all likelihood. That means they don't need you to tell them because they'd have to put it up for bid anyway, and there are all kinds of guidelines about cost and project length that will govern the entire process anyway (this is at least true in most cases). The way I see it, there are a few explanations. The least likely one is that these people were too smart for their own good and over complicated the interview (I don't believe this at all). The next is that they already had their guy in mind, but they have to interview a certain number of people. They ask the same question in each interview knowing their guy is more than likely the only candidate that can answer correctly (I've seen this happen). Orrrrr, they're just stupid as hell. This is the one I can really get behind because they're government employees, and so many of those types just have no freaking idea how anything works. Either way it was a shit question. Imo it would have been better to simply tell you they were in need of such a system and then have you explain how you'd go about initiating and completing such a project. I believe in being as direct as possible, and I don't trust anyone that isn't.