<div dir="ltr">15 years ago, I applied to a network admin role at Google, it was for their corporate office, not even the production network.<div><br></div><div>I had less than two years experience.</div><div><br></div><div>The interviewer asked me:</div><div><br></div><div>1) What is the difference between flow balancing techniques on Cisco IOS and Linux?</div><div>2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America and Europe, how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a TCP size of X?</div><div><br></div><div>I'll never forget this :)</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 10:50 AM Michael Thomas <<a href="mailto:mike@mtcc.com">mike@mtcc.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<div>On 7/14/20 10:33 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:<br>
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<div>On Jul 14, 2020, at 10:20 , Michael Thomas <<a href="mailto:mike@mtcc.com" target="_blank">mike@mtcc.com</a>> wrote:</div>
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<blockquote type="cite">I once failed a network
engineering interview because I couldn’t recite the OSPF LSA
types by number from memory. It was fine, the fact that was a
key question in the interview convinced me that I had no more
desire to work there than they had to hire me.</blockquote>
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<p>I once got rejected because I spaced out and didn't remember the
java keyword "final" as a constant. you can't make this stuff up.<br>
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<p>My personal method is to devise a problem and
actually work with them... because that's what I (or
others) are going to be doing. How well can they get the
requirements? How do they zero in on how to solve it?
You can take this as deep or shallow as you like. Often
I'd give it as a homework assignment if I liked them.</p>
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I prefer this approach as well. Depending on the level of
interviewee, I like to pull up a real world scenario from my
past and see how they approach it. I’m not nearly as concerned
if they get to the right solution as I want to see how they go
about identifying and solving the problem. Do they ask questions
that narrow their focus and identify the issue, or do they start
trying random things hoping to stumble across a solution without
understanding the problem?</div>
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I often use something that was somewhat topical to me but dumbed
down enough to fit in an interview and possible homework assignment.
My reasoning is that I'm not entirely sure what the solution ought
to look like either, so I'm interested to see what their take is. I
can also give them real time feedback just like I would if they were
a co-worker. At base, an interview should answer the question: "can
I work with this person?". <br>
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<blockquote type="cite">Not
being a developer (at least not for the last 25+ years), I haven’t
done many “software” interviews, but I’ve been through network and
sysadmin interviews that ran the gamut. Frankly, the ones that
seemed to be more about fluffing privates were the companies I put
less focus on going forward. The interviewers that seemed to match
my style and wanted to see me do real-world things like
troubleshooting or solving design problems or identifying
architectural flaws in a proposed solution usually resulted in
mutual respect and I usually moved forward through the interview
processes. On the few occasions where I got a job out of a
fluffing interview, it almost universally turned out to be one I
wished I hadn’t taken.</blockquote>
<p>I had a screening interview at Google where the screener asked
some ridiculous question that nobody not straight out of school
would know, and even then not likely. I was like, wtf? If that's
how they treat candidates -- and from everything I've heard it is
-- I want nothing to do with them, and flat out refused their
recruiters a dozen time afterward even though they pleaded that
they've changed. Sorry, interviewing is a two-way street.<br>
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<p>Mike<br>
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