Tough interview questions. - passing

Sat Aug 14 10:12:34 PDT 2004

I prefer to ask questions that test thinking and first principles rather
    than arcane knowledge.

some examples:
  - "tell me the solaris boot sequence" vs.
    "the boot sequence of modern OS's often involves lots of complex,
    non-obvious steps.  why?  give an example."

  - "tell me how the Nagle algorithm works" vs.
    "modern network protocols include several features to reduce
    congestion-- can you describe a few?  when are these algorithms
    counter-productive and how can you work around their limitations?"

  - and my personal favorite...
    "applications which manage big data stores present special problems
    for system and data administration.  name some, describe the problems
    that arise and possible solutions."

    One guy spent 10 minutes wasting time talking about 2GB filesize limits
    in 32-bit filesystems, when there's elephants in the room like backup/
    restore, replication, migration, search performance, index rebuild,
    etc.

Furthermore, if you really want to send someone home, don't ask hard
    "knowledge" questions because smart sponsors will discount your
    interview results as being "trick" questions and "how could anyone
    possibly be expected to know that."

Of course, when The Committee ignores negative results on thinking
    questions, it's time to brush up the resume-- clearly they're hiring
    for speed rather than quality, and you'll be left holding the bag.

adam