I remember an interview at a well known tech-ish company where the question started out as “Estimate this project” with a good description of the scope and team. After I said something like 4 months, interviewer said, “OK. The CEO says it needs to be done in 2 weeks. What now?”

I thought this was a basic project management question about trading off quality, scope, schedule, staffing, etc. and offered the usual suggestions of cutting scope (nope CEO demands entire scope), cutting quality (nope can’t compromise quality), increasing the team, contracting out, reprioritizing and realeasing P1s in 2 weeks (nope, nope, nope). Obviously I didn’t get the job.

Later I learned from an acquaintance inside the company that the right answer was probably “Work the team 24 hour days, nights and weekends, for 2weeks to deliver what the CEO wants. I think I dodged a bullet there.