<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<p><br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 7/14/20 1:14 PM, Matthew Petach
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAEmG1=orjMxniWE+3rnUoXonXHU75KG05DnBpbK1HKHPnoV-xg@mail.gmail.com">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<div dir="auto"><br>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote" dir="auto">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 11:00
Ahmed elBorno <<a href="mailto:amaged@gmail.com"
moz-do-not-send="true">amaged@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
.8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<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>[...]</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>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">I *love* questions like that, because I can
immediately respond back with "well, that depends; did your
sysadmin configure rfc1323 extension support in your TCP
stack? Is SACK enabled? What about window scaling? Does
your OS do dynamic buffer tuning for TCP, or are the values
locked in at start time?"</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">Depending on how the interviewer responds gives
me a pretty good idea how much clue the people I'd be working
with have, and how well they work collaboratively even with
people they don't really know. If they respond well on their
feet, and give me better inputs, I respond with a better
answer.</div>
<div dir="auto"><br>
</div>
<div dir="auto">If they say "It doesn't matter", then I respond
by saying "See, that's why things aren't working so well for
you here; you don't really understand how far down the rabbit
hole goes", and respectfully ask to end the interview before
we waste any more of each other's time.</div>
<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the generic problem with interviewing is that people seem
to believe they are born with a god given innate ability to
interview people. They ask a generic question, and are surprised
and often offended that they get an "it depends" and "please
clarify XYZ". Interviewing is *hard* and doing a semblance of a
good interview for a candidate is time consuming, so most people
just punt with stupid unthoughtful questions where they think that
all of the requirements are perfectly clear. Your answer *should*
impress them, but I doubt that's the case in general.</p>
<p>Mike<br>
</p>
</body>
</html>