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The five stories

	Story	Answers
1	The 12-second schedule screen — query in a loop + missing index	Q6, Q7, Q8
2	The overnight queue backup — poison message from a schema change	Q9, Q12, Q13
3	SignalR vs Azure SignalR Service — scaling out broke it	Q14
4	The proposal that was rejected, then approved later	Q15
5	The junior querying inside a loop	Q16

The 8 things to remember

1	90 seconds, then stop. The follow-up is where you score.
2	Q1 is what it does → who uses it → what you built. Never open with the tech list.
3	"The platform already existed when I joined — I owned scheduling and adherence."
4	Every story: situation → what I found → what I did → result, ending on a number.
5	"I measured rather than guessing." App Insights → SQL logging → execution plan.
6	Incident order: stabilise → communicate → diagnose → fix → prevent. Never start by reading code.
7	Root cause is blameless, and there are usually two — why it broke, why nobody noticed.
8	Deadlines: scope moves, quality doesn't. Disagreement: disagree, then commit.

Words that signal seniority

blameless · root cause · stabilise first · disagree and commit · reversible decision · trade-off · cost of doing nothing · scope, not quality · measure first · own it in production · make the fix systemic · impact in business terms