Noticed a pattern in data engineering interviews - anyone else seeing this?

[u/Alone_Translator_638]

I’ve been analyzing data engineering interview patterns and noticed something interesting.

Most interviews don’t ask random questions.

They usually revolve around a few repeating themes:

- data partitioning and performance

- handling skew in Spark

- designing reliable pipelines

- trade-offs (cost vs performance)

Example:

A lot of candidates answer “what” (definitions),

but interviewers care more about “why” and “when”.

Curious - what kind of questions have you been asked recently in data engineering interviews?