What was the biggest mistake you made early in your career that ended up teaching you a valuable lesson? One of mine was assuming everyone interpreted requirements the same way I did. Learning to ask clarifying questions saved me from a lot of rework. What’s yours?

How do you handle disagreements with your manager about technical decisions? I’ve learned to pick my battles and always come with data instead of opinions when I do push back. It doesn’t always work, but it at least keeps the conversation productive. How do you approach it?

What engineering discipline would you recommend new students specialize in (or avoid) given the current/future job market?

Do you think engineering gets more technical or more psychological over time? The longer I work with teams and systems, the more human behavior seems to matter.

Do you think engineers spend enough time thinking about the user experience of internal tools? I’ve seen teams tolerate painful internal systems that they’d never ship to customers.