Uber · Primly Community

Uber behavioral interview questions and values, what the interviewers are actually probing for

infra_ines · 4 replies

I went through Uber's interview loop for a PM role earlier this year and the behavioral round was the one I was least prepared for, mostly because I underestimated it.

Uber has a published set of cultural values and the behavioral round really is structured around them. I looked them up beforehand but hadn't drilled against them specifically, which was a mistake. The interviewer was asking questions but you could tell each one mapped to a value: customer obsession, doing the right thing, acting like an owner.

Questions I got or that friends have reported: "Tell me about a time you had to make a decision with incomplete data and significant stakes." This is classic owner-mindset territory. They want you to show you didn't freeze or escalate unnecessarily. "Give me an example of when you disagreed with a stakeholder and how you resolved it." Not asking for conflict resolution as a skill, they're checking if you can hold a position and still drive alignment. "Describe a time you failed and what you took from it." This one felt the most open-ended. I went with something real where I shipped something that underperformed. Interviewer seemed satisfied. They pushed back once: "what would you do differently if you had it to do again?" "Tell me about a situation where you had to prioritize ruthlessly." PM-specific variation of this showed up for me.

Tone of the round was conversational but there was a pace. They were running through questions methodically. I think they had a rubric in front of them, which tracks with how their loops are structured.

Prep tip that helped me: I wrote out 6-7 core STAR stories beforehand and mapped each one to multiple potential questions. That way I wasn't searching for a story under pressure, I was just pulling from a prepared set and adapting.

For PMs and APMs especially: bring metrics into your stories. "We improved the metric by X%" matters more than "the team was happy with the outcome."

4 replies

jordan_pm

The incomplete data question is their version of the owner-mindset test. Every good answer I've seen involves making a defensible call and communicating it clearly, not hedging endlessly.

director_dee

From the hiring side: the failure question reveals more than people think. Interviewers aren't looking for someone who never fails, they're looking for calibration. If your failure story is too minor, that's also a signal.

apm_aisha

That's a really helpful frame. I spent a lot of time second-guessing whether my failure story was 'bad enough.' Turns out: a real failure with real reflection is what lands.

ops_omar

For ops roles it was similar. The stakeholder conflict question was almost word-for-word what I got. Uber really does value people who can push back without burning bridges.