Product wants to skip tests and code review to hit a launch date. What do you do?

Summary

Make the risk concrete, offer alternatives that protect the date (reduce scope, feature flags, ship to a subset of users, temporary extra review capacity), and agree explicitly on any deliberate debt with a payback plan — rather than silently cutting quality.

Longer Answer

Explain consequences in product terms: a payments bug would cost refunds, support load and trust. Often the date can be met with a smaller scope or staged rollout. If a conscious trade-off is made (e.g. fewer end-to-end tests for a non-critical area), record it in the debt register with an owner and a date. Never skip review for high-risk areas like money, auth or migrations.

Key Points

• Translate risk into product impact
• Options that keep the date
• Deliberate debt, recorded with a payback plan

Deep dive: Managing Technical Debt Deliberately

What interviewers look for

Partnership with product, risk judgement and principled flexibility.

Red flags

• Silently agreeing
• Refusing without offering options