job screening question

Thu Jul 5 17:38:28 UTC 2012

On Jul 5, 2012, at 10:20 AM, Darius Jahandarie <djahandarie at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 1:11 PM, Oliver Garraux <oliver at g.garraux.net> wrote:
>> Seems fairly straightforward to me.  It'll break path MTU discovery.
> 
> Since Bill said "(not IP in general, TCP specifically)", I don't think
> PMTUD breaking is what he's looking for.
> 
> I'd venture more along the lines of lack of Destination Unreachables
> making things hang.

All of DU failing, path MTU discovery, and congestion control / source quench might be the right / expected answer, which makes this a not great question.  DU doesn't break TCP per se but would hang sessions until timeout; path MTU isn't a TCP function per se, though it uses TCP as the probe.  Source quench is only a small fraction of the TCP congestion control solution space now.

My systems consulting company uses a HR prescreen of 20 questions.  It took a team of senior consultants and HR some years to tune the questions in.  They need to be clear, have unambiguously correct answers, the answer correctness needs to be obvious to the HR / recruiter who isn't technical.  

I think this one fails to have an unambiguously correct answer and an answer the non-tech recruiter / HR person will understand.  So, probably time for a better question...

George William Herbert
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