I’ve written a few Linux file systems and I’m not even sure I’d have answered that question correctly.
I’ve also failed job interviews where I was told there was no coding expected in the face to face and then got given a piece of paper and asked to solve 3 theoretical problems in SQL on paper while 3 interviewers watched. 10 years prior I’d worked for several years on Oracle middleware so I knew SQL inside and and out but I still lost my nerve at that interview and was told I wasn’t experienced enough.
There was another telephone interview where I was asked all sorts of command line questions, the problem there is they spelt out the command line flags differently to how I normally talk and read then (eg “what’s see hatech em ohh Dee seven hundred and seventy seven”, had i seen it written down I’d have been like “oh you mean see hatech mod seven seven seven” (chmod 777) but they way they read it out sounded cryptic has hell.
So there’s a valuable lesson I’ve learned for interviewing: putting pressure on interviewees is just as likely to filter out good candidates as it is bad ones. So you’re better off making them comfortable during the process. Good but nervous candidates will perform better. The interviewing process shouldn’t be about who can hold their nerve the longest.
There are moments in life when I wish everyone was forced to learn NATO phonetic alphabet early in school.
"Charlie Hotel Mike Oscar Delta Seven Seven Seven".
The reason to cram into people a standard spelling alphabet is that it minimizes confusion over the usual "see as in $random-first-name". The reason to standardize on the NATO one is that it's already an international standard, and a subset of the population that goes to work with anything resembling a radio transceiver will have to learn it anyway.
It wouldn’t have helped in the interview if they did use the NATO phonetic alphabet because when you read CLI commands or talk about them in the office, you don’t spell it out using the NATO alphabet.
The point was the interviewer read a written command differently to how I’d typically hear it. It’s a little like the S-Q-L vs Sequal debate and how that can sometimes throw people.
I’ve also failed job interviews where I was told there was no coding expected in the face to face and then got given a piece of paper and asked to solve 3 theoretical problems in SQL on paper while 3 interviewers watched. 10 years prior I’d worked for several years on Oracle middleware so I knew SQL inside and and out but I still lost my nerve at that interview and was told I wasn’t experienced enough.
There was another telephone interview where I was asked all sorts of command line questions, the problem there is they spelt out the command line flags differently to how I normally talk and read then (eg “what’s see hatech em ohh Dee seven hundred and seventy seven”, had i seen it written down I’d have been like “oh you mean see hatech mod seven seven seven” (chmod 777) but they way they read it out sounded cryptic has hell.
So there’s a valuable lesson I’ve learned for interviewing: putting pressure on interviewees is just as likely to filter out good candidates as it is bad ones. So you’re better off making them comfortable during the process. Good but nervous candidates will perform better. The interviewing process shouldn’t be about who can hold their nerve the longest.