I'll never get any job again:/
A collection of sysadmin test questions and answers for interviews/exams
31–38 of 38 posts
Re: A collection of sysadmin test questions and answers for interviews/exams
#32Hey, it lists answers too. And it's concise. That makes it immediately useful. I was expecting a list of questions, and the interviewer is expected to just muddle through picking the ones for which they knew the answer.
Not only is it immediately useful, it's actually educational. That's nice. I'd say it's well done, even if some people are saying that the questions are too junior. It's well-organized, well-structured, and well-written.
Re: A collection of sysadmin test questions and answers for interviews/exams
#33Funny, I don't see the immutable file question, or questions on capabilities, systemd, selinux, etc. Also, there are "big traffic" questions missing, like how to tune a kernel to perform lots of network ops, how to design a system for high-performance and high-availability, network attached storage, firewalls, replication, etc. Basically, how do I build a system that I know can deliver X traffic at Y rate, and scale…
Isn't that the magic of GitHub? Put in a PR
Re: A collection of sysadmin test questions and answers for interviews/exams
#34"what happens when you type api.example.com and press enter?" This has been one of my interview questions for years. Take a minute to speak your answer aloud. Do it now, I'll wait. It requires walking through several layers and subsystems. Really a great question for exposing how the candidate models a complex system. The best part, as an interviewer, is seeing how deep the candidate goes down the potentially infinit…
>"what happens when you type api.example.com and press enter?" That's easy. Bash checks all the directories as listed in my $PATH, doesn't find it and then prints "api.example.com: command not found" on the screen. If you want me to tell you how a bluetooth keyboard works you're going to need to pay more than a sysadmin's salary.
Please don't take offense, but there are plenty of people in the world, who know the intricacies of Bluetooth, know the intricacies of how a keyboard send signals, may even know the pin out of PS/2 and USB, yet make no where near what people holding the title "Site Reliability Engineer" or "DevOps Engineer" do.
There are some poorly paid electrical engineers in the world. There are overpaid under educated sysadmins in the world as well.
Re: A collection of sysadmin test questions and answers for interviews/exams
#35"what happens when you type api.example.com and press enter?" This has been one of my interview questions for years. Take a minute to speak your answer aloud. Do it now, I'll wait. It requires walking through several layers and subsystems. Really a great question for exposing how the candidate models a complex system. The best part, as an interviewer, is seeing how deep the candidate goes down the potentially infinit…
When I had to answer a question like that, I'd give a bit of detail about each stage and then ask if the interviewer if they wanted me to talk in more depth or go on to the next stage.
Re: A collection of sysadmin test questions and answers for interviews/exams
#36"what happens when you type api.example.com and press enter?" This has been one of my interview questions for years. Take a minute to speak your answer aloud. Do it now, I'll wait. It requires walking through several layers and subsystems. Really a great question for exposing how the candidate models a complex system. The best part, as an interviewer, is seeing how deep the candidate goes down the potentially infinit…
This has become my least favorite question to answer, partly because the rabbit hole is too deep for a limited amount of time, and mostly because it has so little to do with the job I'm interviewing for. It also feels so tedious, having answered it so many times before. The hardest part about answering this question is not sounding or looking like I just want it to be over, already.
> Really a great question for exposing how the candidate models a complex system.
The question could do that, if the interviewer is sufficiently interactive and asks the candidate to explore or explain, but I have yet to experience it. Every single time I've answered the question, the interviewer just sits and listens.
Am I really exposing how I model anything when I'm giving what's now a pretty rote answer, colored by years of reading postings about it?
Re: A collection of sysadmin test questions and answers for interviews/exams
#37"what happens when you type api.example.com and press enter?" This has been one of my interview questions for years. Take a minute to speak your answer aloud. Do it now, I'll wait. It requires walking through several layers and subsystems. Really a great question for exposing how the candidate models a complex system. The best part, as an interviewer, is seeing how deep the candidate goes down the potentially infinit…
there's at least one collaboratively edited doc about this standard interview Q; see https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when
Interestingly enough this only ever attempts to answer the technical part but doesn't consider the electrophysiology and psychology of it. What happens in your brain when you start typing each letter? And in your arms and fingers? And your memory? What if you have dyslexia? Or Parkinson's? Or dementia? What if your primary language is Swahili?
And so on.
This question can truly be incredibly interesting.
Re: A collection of sysadmin test questions and answers for interviews/exams
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
there's at least one collaboratively edited doc about this standard interview Q; see https://github.com/alex/what-happens-when
Interestingly enough this only ever attempts to answer the technical part but doesn't consider the electrophysiology and psychology of it. What happens in your brain when you start typing each letter? And in your arms and fingers? And your memory? What if you have dyslexia? Or Parkinson's? Or dementia? What if your primary language is Swahili? And so on. This question can truly be incredibly interesting.
Yeah, I could have sworn I saw an alternate version of this what-happens-when wiki which spent more time describing "your brain sends signals which are interpreted as follows …"
But I didn't come up with it in a quick Web search and thought maybe I had dreamed it.