← 🤝 The Customer-Facing Craft
Core
Recovering a Failing Live Demo
Mid-demo the system throws a stack trace on the projector in front of the customer's executive team. The recovery is not technical heroics; it is composure plus parallelism: keep talking and orienting the room while a teammate triages off-screen, fall back to a prepared path before the silence spikes anxiety, and never blame the data, a teammate, or the room. A clean recovery routinely builds more trust than a flawless demo, because executives are watching how you behave when the thing breaks.
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RELATED CONCEPTS
LESSONS THAT TEACH THIS
Foundations of Forward Deployed EngineeringUse prototype shortcuts without changing the claim unnoticed28 min→Foundations of Forward Deployed EngineeringLead an update with the decision and keep its evidence intact28 min→Foundations of Forward Deployed EngineeringDemonstrate a customer workflow with visible evidence and honest limits28 min→
PRACTICE THIS IN REAL QUESTIONS
Behavioral & Customer ScenariosTell me about the most ambiguous project you've owned end-to-end. What did you do in week one?→Behavioral & Customer ScenariosWhy customer-facing instead of pure engineering? Convince me you won't quit in a year.→Behavioral & Customer ScenariosThis role is 50–75% travel, sometimes living at customer sites for weeks. Honestly, how will you handle that?→Behavioral & Customer ScenariosTell me about a time you shipped in days something that 'should' have taken months. Which corners did you cut, and how did you choose?→System Design & Production EngineeringIt's Friday evening at a customer site and they want a hotfix shipped now. How do you do it safely, and when do you refuse?→Behavioral & Customer ScenariosTell me about learning an unfamiliar domain fast. How fast, and how did you validate you understood it?→