183: Interview Preparation - Project Storytelling
Practice
Explain the task manager in three versions: 30 seconds, two minutes, and ten minutes. Cover requirements, architecture, one difficult bug, a security decision, a tradeoff, and what you would improve.
Checkpoint
Your explanation must match the implemented project. Do not claim React Query, JWT, SQL, or deployment behavior that the project does not actually use.
Evidence map
Prepare links or commands for the project’s API contract, ownership test, persistence choice, deployment check, and one debugging note. Interviewers may probe a claimed tradeoff; distinguish implemented behavior, planned improvement, and an experiment you did not keep.
Worked narrative
Use a funnel: 30 seconds for user/problem and result; 2 minutes for architecture, your contribution, and one tradeoff; 10 minutes for a request trace, bug timeline, security boundary, schema choice, tests, and next improvement. For a task manager, trace “create task” from form validation to API authorization, persistence, response, and any notification. Tie every claim to a file, command, test, log, or measured observation.
Edge questions and rubric
Prepare honest answers for concurrent edits, invalid ownership, database failure, slow lists, migration rollback, and how you would scale beyond current usage. Score 2 points each for accuracy, clarity at all three lengths, ownership, evidence, tradeoff depth, and recovery reasoning. Full credit requires naming one thing not implemented rather than presenting a planned feature as shipped.