How do you answer "Tell me about a time you disagreed with a teammate"?
- Technology:
- Behavioral
- Roles:
- Frontend Developer,
- Backend Developer,
- Full Stack Developer,
- Software Engineer,
- DevOps Engineer,
- QA Engineer,
- Mobile Developer,
- Data Engineer,
- Machine Learning Engineer
- Topics:
- Behavioral Interviews
Quick answer
Describe a real technical or process disagreement, show that you listened and argued with evidence rather than opinion, explain how a decision was reached, and how you supported it afterwards even if it was not your idea.
What the interviewer is evaluating
- Collaboration and respect
- Ability to influence with evidence
- Willingness to commit to a team decision
- Emotional maturity
How to structure your answer (STAR)
- Situation: the decision and the two positions.
- Task: what you needed to achieve.
- Action: how you understood their view and made your case.
- Result: the decision, how you supported it and what you learned.
Example answer
Situation: a senior colleague wanted to introduce a global state library for a new feature. I thought the feature only needed local state and server caching.
Task: we needed to agree before the sprint started.
Action: I asked what problems they expected the library to solve. They were worried about prop drilling across a deep component tree. I built a small prototype of the critical screen using a context and a data-fetching cache, and we compared the two approaches on code size and complexity.
Result: we agreed to start without the library and to revisit if shared state grew. Six months later the feature still had not needed it. I learned that a quick prototype resolves more debates than arguments do.
Discussion
Interviewers want to know whether you can disagree productively. Teams need people who raise concerns, but also people who commit once a decision is made.
Choose a disagreement about something that mattered, such as an architecture choice, a deadline or code review standards. Avoid personal conflicts. Show that you first understood the other person鈥檚 reasoning, then brought data: a benchmark, a prototype, an incident report.
The outcome does not need to be that you won. "We went with their approach, and I helped make it work" is a strong answer if you explain what you learned.
Key points
- Pick a professional, not personal, disagreement
- Show you listened first
- Use evidence: prototypes, data, constraints
- Disagree and commit
Common mistakes
- Choosing a story where the other person is portrayed as incompetent.
- Claiming you never disagree with anyone.
- Ending without a resolution.
Follow-up questions
- Tell me about a time you received critical feedback.