Tell me about a time you did something without discussing with your manager first
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What is this question about
This question tests judgment around autonomy: when you chose to act independently, how you assessed risk, and whether you still kept your manager appropriately informed. Interviewers are usually not looking for rebellion; they want to understand whether you can distinguish between decisions you should make yourself and decisions that need alignment. Strong answers show initiative plus communication discipline, not just speed or confidence.
Key Insights
- You do not need a dramatic act of defiance. The best stories usually show sound judgment about where your decision rights started and stopped, and how you managed the downside.
- Make the risk tradeoff explicit. Explain why waiting for your manager would have been costly, what you did to keep the decision reversible, and how you informed them once action was underway.
- Avoid telling a story whose punchline is simply 'I was right.' The stronger signal is that you acted independently in a way that protected the team, respected context, and built trust afterward.
What interviewers probe atlevel
Top Priority
A strong junior answer shows you did not hide the action; you acted, then quickly made your manager aware with context.
Good examples
🟢Once I had taken the immediate step, I sent my manager a short message explaining what I did, why I believed it was safe, and what I was watching for next.
🟢I acted to unblock the work, then looped in both my manager and the teammate affected so no one was surprised by the change.
Bad examples
🔴I didn't mention it until our next one-on-one because I wanted to show a finished result instead of raising questions early.
🔴I told my manager afterward that I had already done it, mainly so they wouldn't slow things down.
Weak answers treat communication as optional or political; strong answers show that even when acting alone, the candidate respects others' need for visibility.
Valuable
Example answers atlevel
Great answers
On a recent project, my manager was out for the afternoon and a broken test environment was blocking both me and another new engineer. I checked our team docs, compared the recent changes, and found that a configuration value had been updated incorrectly. Because the fix was small and matched our normal process, I corrected it in the test environment, reran the checks, and confirmed both of us were unblocked. Right after that, I sent my manager a message explaining what I changed, why I felt it was safe, and asking them to let me know if they would have preferred a different approach. They told me that was the right level of initiative and asked me to add the recovery steps to the team notes, which I did.
Last month we had a new intern scheduled to start at noon and I noticed our onboarding docs were out of date, while my manager was in back-to-back meetings and unreachable. I walked through the repo like a brand-new teammate, discovered a missing environment variable and an outdated dev-start command that would have eaten up the newcomer's first afternoon, and decided to fix the docs and add a small start-up script. I opened a pull request with the updated README, the script, and a short explanation of what I changed, then personally paired with the intern to confirm they were up and running in about 30 minutes. I messaged my manager and the team channel immediately explaining my changes and why I acted, and my manager later asked me to fold the steps into our official onboarding checklist, which I did.
Poor answers
My manager was busy and I didn't want to wait, so I just changed the way our feature was implemented. It worked on my machine and I was pretty sure it was the better approach anyway. I told my manager in our next one-on-one and showed them the progress I'd made. They had a few questions, but overall I think it was good that I kept things moving.
Question Timeline
See when this question was last asked and where, including any notes left by other candidates.
Early November, 2024
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