Hey Reader,

Welcome back to Guided Growth where we talk about the skills that accelerate your career beyond just writing great code.

This is The Unwritten Rules #4: a 4-part series where I share the career rules that exist but nobody shared them with you.

I wait until the last 10 minutes of every interview. The candidate has done their coding round. Their system design. They're mentally tired. Guard is down.

Then I ask:

"Tell me about a time you were wrong about something at work. What happened?"

Simple question. No trick. And it's the most revealing question I've ever used.

I hear four types of answers:

🔴 The Deflector:"I can't think of a specific time." This tells me they'll hide problems on my team.

🟡 The Blamer:"A deployment broke production, but QA didn't catch it and the requirements were unclear." Takes credit for wins, passes blame for losses.

🟡 The Performer:"I chose React when Vue would've been better." Safe. Rehearsed. The interview-prep version of a mistake. I learn nothing real.

🟢 The Real One:"I pushed hard for a full rewrite of a legacy service. My tech lead said refactor incrementally. I argued. We went with my approach. Three months in, it was blocking other teams. We scrapped it. I wasted the team's time because I was too attached to my solution."

That last answer tells me everything. Here's why it works:

1. Specificity. They tell me exactly what happened. Not a summary, a real story.
2. Ownership. They say "I was wrong." Not "it didn't work out." Three words. Incredibly hard to say.
3. Behavior change. They tell me what they do differently now. Not a vague lesson, a concrete change.

I'm not hiring someone who never makes mistakes. That person doesn't exist. I'm hiring someone who handles mistakes well. That one question tells me which type you are. In 2 minutes.

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This was the final Unwritten Rule. If this series helped you, forward the issue that helped you most to a friend who's interviewing.

That's the best way to help them and to grow this newsletter.

Thanks,

Abhishek

The Guided Growth