Interview kit
Interviewing John P. McGlone
Short on prep time? These questions get to the useful parts of John’s experience. Each one lists what a strong answer covers and where to check it. Pick the ones you want, then print or copy them.
1. AI product work
“Walk me through “Catch me up,” the AI summary feature in Men of Hunger, from idea to launch.”
A strong answer covers
- Why a summary was the right feature, and what problem it solved for members
- What goes into the prompt (the thread, images, the public profile) and why
- How he judged whether a summary was good enough to ship
- Cost, speed, and what happens when the model gets it wrong
2. AI agents and tools
“You built an MCP server for Men of Hunger. What can an agent do with it, and what did you choose not to let it do?”
A strong answer covers
- A clear line between read access (admin insights) and actions (scheduling posts and newsletters)
- How permissions and mistakes are handled
- A concrete example of an agent using it in practice
Check it:Men of Hunger on the résumé
3. AI-native development
“How do Claude Code, Codex and Cursor fit into your day, and where don’t you trust them?”
A strong answer covers
- How he breaks work into pieces an agent can do well
- How he reviews AI-written code before it ships
- Where he still writes code by hand, and why
- That he owns the product decisions, not the tools
Check it:AI skills on the résuméGreenlane
4. Zero to one
“Rumble Studio went from nothing to the App Store with you as the only iOS developer. What early decisions paid off, and which would you change?”
A strong answer covers
- Architecture choices made under time pressure, and how they held up
- How he worked with the backend and design teams without a big iOS team around him
- What owning every update on iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro taught him
- How 2,000+ creators adopting it changed his priorities
5. Real-time media
“How did you integrate LiveKit for calls and multi-platform streaming? What broke in production?”
A strong answer covers
- How audio and video stay in sync, and what he measured
- A specific production issue and how he found it
- What changed between Agora at Callin and LiveKit at Rumble
Check it:Rumble and Callin on the résumé
6. Product and design
“Tell me about an ambitious design you shipped, like Vision Pro controls that highlight where the user looks.”
A strong answer covers
- How he pushed back or reshaped the idea without losing what made it good
- How he and design decided what was worth the engineering cost
- What users noticed once it shipped
Check it:Rumble on the résuméTim Cook’s recommendation (product designer)
7. Full stack
“For Men of Hunger you built the iOS app, the web app and the API. How do you decide where a piece of logic lives?”
A strong answer covers
- Clear reasoning about client versus server responsibilities
- How he keeps iOS and web behavior consistent
- Tradeoffs he’d revisit if the product grew tenfold
Check it:Men of Hunger on the résumé
8. Raising the team
“How do you make the engineers around you better?”
A strong answer covers
- Specific habits he spreads: clear tickets with a done state, readable commits, shared style guides
- A time he helped someone through a hard problem or a hard conversation
- How he gives technical direction without slowing people down
Check it:Recommendations from Kevin Wang and Mili ShrivastavaAirside style guide on the résumé
9. Judgment
“Why are you building Greenlane, and what does that say about how you pick problems?”
A strong answer covers
- A real pain he hit himself (App Review for the Men of Hunger iOS app)
- How he decided it was worth building rather than working around
- How he’s checking whether other developers need it
Check it:Greenlane on the résumégreenlane.dev
Résumé: https://jpmcglone.com/resume/ · Want to know where he fits your role first? Try the fit check .