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Re: [PLUG] OT (but not really): Tough Interview questions
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On Wednesday 11 February 2009 07:26:12 am Toby DiPasquale wrote:
> > I consider these fairly tough questions -- what do you think?
>
> I consider these to be pretty stupid questions. I know what ELF is
> because I was curious. I was a Linux kernel engineer for years and
> even then I didn't have to know that. I wouldn't want to work at a
> place that had such little clue that was asking these kinds of
> questions of its candidates.
The last two jobs I applied for, the last being my current position, were much
more concerned about how I was going to go about *finding* answers than whether
I had them memorized. The same was true in my last career: nobody expected
you to have obscure stuff memorized, they just expected you to know (1) what
the pertinent question was, (2) that you knew how to find the answer, and (3)
that you understood the answer once you found it.
These seem to be dumb questions under that test. A quick pop over to
wikipedia would allow me to provide an answer to the first question, without a
clue as to what my answer meant, or why knowing it would help me do my job.
The second questions seems more legitimate, and I could probably provide a
close answer from memory. But why would I need to have memorized the precise
details when there are so many resources for finding them, if and when I need
that level of understanding. I have always found that those who tend to
memorize a lot of questionably useless facts are not the best at thinking and
reasoning things through.
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