# FDE Interview Week Plan

A 7-day prep card for company loops that mix coding, system design / decomp, and customer judgment.

## Before day 1

- [ ] Confirm coding bar, travel, and KPI model (ARR assist vs delivery outcomes)
- [ ] Pick one target company guide + one peer guide
- [ ] Gather 3 ownership stories (production incident, scoped MVP, stakeholder conflict)
- [ ] Bookmark: decomp cheat sheet, Translation Matrix, agent evals

## Day 1–2 — Coding & systems

- [ ] One timed coding session under incomplete specs
- [ ] One production debugging narrative (symptom → hypothesis → fix → prevention)
- [ ] Refresh APIs, auth, retries, observability language

## Day 3 — Retrieval / agents / platform

- [ ] Drill retrieval vs generation failure diagnosis
- [ ] Sketch a tool-calling agent with least privilege + kill switch
- [ ] Define latency and cost ceilings before “expand seats”

## Day 4 — Full customer case (C.A.S.E.)

- [ ] Clarify success metric, users, data, security, non-goals
- [ ] Architect a thin end-to-end path
- [ ] Name the product gaps you will glue first
- [ ] Write the eval / UAT / adoption proof plan

## Day 5 — Constraint stress test

- [ ] Replay the case with denied prod access
- [ ] Replay with dirty CSVs / partial connectors
- [ ] Replay with security blocking write tools
- [ ] Practice the “next unlock” ask (not a blame story)

## Day 6 — Behavioral & exec communication

- [ ] Story: conflict with a champion / veto player
- [ ] Story: you reduced scope and still shipped value
- [ ] Story: you surfaced a failure mode before go-live
- [ ] Practice precise risk language (no demo theater)

## Day 7 — Mock loop

- [ ] Recruiter screen (10 min)
- [ ] Technical / design (30–40 min)
- [ ] Customer case (30–40 min)
- [ ] Score yourself on the company rubric
- [ ] Rewrite the weakest story overnight

## Instant fail modes (post on your monitor)

- Jump to architecture before constraints
- Org-wide assistant in phase one
- No eval / promotion gate
- Hide red cases on stage
- Blame “customer readiness”

## Links

- https://fdehub.dev/interviews/fde-case-study-decomp
- https://fdehub.dev/tools/decomp-simulator
- https://fdehub.dev/learn/business-to-ai-translation-matrix
- https://fdehub.dev/tech/agent-evals
- https://fdehub.dev/tools/stack-alignment