questions asked during network engineer interview

Tue Jul 14 20:26:50 UTC 2020

> William Herrin
> Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2020 8:32 PM
> 
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 12:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike at mtcc.com> wrote:
> > On 7/14/20 12:09 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:12 PM Mehmet Akcin <mehmet at akcin.net>
> wrote:
> > >> I am hosting a live show a few times a month about internet
> > >> infrastructure and today's topics were, your favorite questions
> > >> asked network engineers - you can watch the recording here
> > >>
> > >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3pvikTrF0M
> > >>
> > >> if you have suggestions on topics to cover helping network operations
> engineering that you want to see in here, please feel free to contact me off-
> list, and let's create unique content that can be helpful to others.
> > >
> > > "What happens when you type www.google.com in your browser bar
> and
> > > hit enter?" is one of my favorite questions. Half the field of
> > > computing happens next. Keyboard interrupts fire. Bits are poked in
> > > dram, sram, maybe even tcam. Packets are sent. Fonts are composed
> into pixels.
> > > There's a crazy amount you can talk about and the right answer is:
> > > string things together in order for 5 or 10 minutes without getting
> > > anything horribly wrong.
> >
> > Oh, I thought this was a trick question of whether it takes you
> > directly to google, or does a search.
> 
> That's a good start. First thing the browser does decide whether that's a URL
> or a search question. How does it decide? And then what happens?
> 
> I will prompt you to keep talking. After all, I'm rooting for you to succeed so
> that I can hire you.
> 
The question is vague enough for the candidate to start talking just about anything they like. 
What happens where? In the world? In the universe? In my body?
Depending on the position you're hiring for you may want to include the "where" as well to narrow down the scope of the talk (to say "finger tips" if you hire a brain surgeon or 2020 laureate of Kavli Prize for Neuroscience for discover of pressure receptors, or simply to "network" if hiring network engineer, etc...). 
 
adam