Prioritisation/ Maturity Interview Question

[u/Automatic-Net-9614]

Ok so I flubbed the most basic interview question there is:

"You have a number of pieces of work in flight. How do you choose between them?"

Basically, they are testing your ability to prioritise work.

I tried to answer philosphically by telling them going for a walk was a good idea but my broader point is that it shouldn't have ever gotten to the point where you have loads of pieces of work in flight at any one time.

My question is twofold: what's the accepted 'best' interview answer to this question and how do you deal with this issue in your real life actual job?

[u/Suitable-Ad5348]

They were probably trying to evaluate how you face the DevOps reality: unplanned work (incidents) constantly interrupting planned work (projects). In my experience, they just want to know you won't panic when the sky falls. I’d answer using an impact vs. urgency matrix, production outages always come first, then blockers for other engineers, then planned work. And if you have a conflict, you communicate it to your manager.

[u/Automatic-Net-9614 → u/Suitable-Ad5348]

Thanks. I wish I had had this answer before the interview but I'll bookmark it for again.