Interviewer seemed friendly but lacked seriousness. Interviewer was busy eating lunch (on hangouts) all through the interview. Interview was already postponed at the last minute a few days earlier. Probably there was no major requirement. No questions on project execution / stakeholder management / product design. No chance sought to explain my work and how I fit the role / org. One question on how to compare two plans against actual. I pointed him in the direction of MAPE. He/She said averages are bad, over-capacity plan is better because it provides for buffer capacity, did not want to look at the cost of such a decision, trend and std-deviations were shot down as not in the right direction. Ultimately there was limited clarity in the question itself. The solution he/she suggested (percentiles) was not a standard solution. Probably they have mistakenly used a non-standard solution and are believing that it is the right one. For some discussion on this topic you can search online and MAPE is accepted in either of the scenarios (over/under estimation) because both are equally bad for the company (in terms of loss). Now customer experience might be better with over-estimation but that is a business decision to be made on a case-by-case basis. As I got to know from the interviewer, they already had 6 PMs in the team. Now that is a big number for just one vertical of Flipkart business. So, there really was no big need and was an interview to pass time and show off that they are so busy that this interview was as important as his/her lunch was. Good luck Flipkart!

Multiple rounds, well scheduled and well structured. Though interviewers’ pedigree leaves a lot to be desired. As an interviewer for product roles one should have clarity of thought and be open to ideation and questions.