questions asked during network engineer interview
Michael Thomas
mike at mtcc.com
Tue Jul 14 20:37:20 UTC 2020
On 7/14/20 1:25 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
>
>
> - If someone asks me to do an algorithm or coding question, I
> generally tell them to pound sand; that I generally use the language
> statement or a standard library, or look up hard stuff in Knuth - and
> then ask them if they'd like to discuss the specifics about how I
> might approach finding/developing specialized algorithms for the
> problems I'll be working on. (I refuse to be a code monkey on a
> string - and if they insist, I know that there's no way I'd want to
> work for them.) I'm reminded of a story an old-line DEC engineer told
> me - at his interview they asked him about converting an octal number
> to hex, or some such - he basically asked if they had an octal-hex
> calculator handy (remember the old paper ones?). After that, the
> interview went swimmingly - he thought that was kind of a test to see
> how he'd react (who really wants to hire someone who's going to start
> doing paper calculations of something silly).
>
I got rejected once because he wanted me to write strstr() on a
whiteboard and it was insufficiently Knuth blessed, which I admitted and
said in real life I'd just look it up, because you know, that's what
resourceful engineers do. That wasn't good enough.
Mike, I didn't even know it was programming interview so it took me
aback even more
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