> > So in the case of google I would recommending listing all your > scripting qualifications in extreme detail, but just be prepaired to > handle the questions. Afterall I told the interviewer my best > scripting langauge was bash and he made me write a fairly complex > script over the phone. Not in a sudo langauge or algorithm form, but > exactly. So the conversation went something like this: > > Me: "if, square bracket, dash f, slash etc slash passwd, close square bracket" > Interviewer: "Was that a lower case or capital if? So do you need some > type of special character to delimit the end of the if statement?" > ... > > Of course that went on for what turned out to be a 20 line shell script.
Man... textbook case of interviewing gone wrong... I feel for ya... :-) I think a more productive approach would be for them to send you some examples from their own library of programs and discuss what they do over the phone... of course.. that's just one small facet of an interview.. I had a friend who was dinged while interviewing with google for some trivial details relating to unfamiliarity with some shell issues... like, can you do: cat file > file... which unix people will tell ya: "don't do that"... yeah.. stupid mistake on his part.. but it was just that.. a stupid mistake.. not something indicating he's not up to the job. There was also a question about how someone can get ethernet packets from a switch which aren't destined for them. One answer was to flood the switch with arp packets using random MAC addresses.. on most switches that (at least used to) blow out the cache and convert the switch to an effective hub. Seems like the type of thing you'd only be aware of if you've actually been under such an attack and were responsible for stopping it. On the other hand, I don't think these were as limiting on my friend's interview as the fact that his resume listed that he was looking for a 'good looking girl', or perhaps something slightly more crass but similar. The guy's definitely smart-but-so-dumb :-) We need someone to get hired into google and convince them to open up a reno office... what better way to show they're 'not being evil' than setting up shop in a gambling town.. :-) -Brian _______________________________________________ RLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.rlug.org/mailman/listinfo/rlug
