10 ms·

I had an interview for a systems administrative position way back when that was my primary gig, admittedly this was in the twilight after ten years of experienc

I had an interview for a systems administrative position way back when that was my primary gig, admittedly this was in the twilight after ten years of experience and I had already mostly gotten sick of systems administration and was deeply into coding so maybe I was just too jaded, but the single question I recall that they asked me I actually found so stupid it was insulting; What's the default bytes per block in random linux distribution x version y when using filesystem z? My response; I'd google it. Perhaps this is unique to the Australian branch of Google or something but I get the impression that they're much more into the whole meaningless rote memorisation of facts than is often let on. I had a contact from another Google HR person a couple months back in Estonia, this time for a development position. I can't say I wasn't tempted but this time I turned them down flat.

cletus 16y ago
That does seem like a strange question but then again I'm not a sysadmin so I really don't know what's reasonable. I'll frame this in what I know, which is programming. I think it's entirely reasonable to ask someone how a hashtable or even a quick sort (or some other O(n log n) sort) works because programmers should be familiar with that even if 99.9% of the time (if not 100% of the time) you're using a HashMap or std::map or dict or whatever. But number of inodes does seem somewhat esoteric.
- etherael 16y ago
  In my view, it's stupid because it implies that if you're the kind of person that bothers to attempt to commit irrelevant or at best situationally relevant things like this to memory as a matter of course, you probably aren't making optimal use of your mental resources. I found it pretty ironic actually as that's exactly the kind of thing we have search engines for.
  - megablast 16y ago
    On the other hand, if you are constantly working with certain systems, you will know this stuff. If they ask me something esoteric about a language or API that I know really well, I can answer all the tricky questions, or explain how I think it would work. If it is something I use rarely, then I could not. Anyway, isn't block size standard across all OS?
    - etherael 16y ago
      Just checked the mkfs.ext4 man page and no, that doesn't seem to be the case. This was about five years ago so the precise question I can't perfectly remember, but the nature of it was as stated; It was a question about a specific filesystem setting default value, on a specific version of a specific distribution of linux, inode size, bytes per inode or bytes per block. Apologies for sounding a little addled but it's been five years since I have been a systems administrator so it's all melted together in my memory.
    - barrkel 16y ago
      I think these kinds of specific questions are justified, but only on the basis that (a) it tests that the candidate really does or has worked in this field in depth, and (b) you have a bunch of other similar questions, and knowing the answer to just one or two of them counts as a pass. Basically, it's like throwing spears into an opaque pool, hoping to find evidence of the salmon of knowledge.
      - etherael 16y ago
        Oh, should add, the specific version was not one I had had any experience with, nor claimed to have had any experience with.
        kaens 16y ago
        I could totally see asking someone that question if they said that they were intimately familiar with some distro or another. Outside of that context, it seems like a really bad question. Maybe there was another purpose to the question (like seeing how you reacted to bad questions), or you just had a shitty interviewer.
      - tkahn6 16y ago
        FWIW I laughed out loud at "salmon of knowledge". Great analogy.
        barrkel 16y ago
shubhamharnal 16y ago
Perhaps the point was not merely regurgitation of facts but an analysis of your thought-process. It is almost impossible to have such an esoteric bit of trivia but you could have at least given them something: "...Well I dunno but let's see...Filesystem Z(let's say reiserfs)...so this one's pretty good with really large files...its preferred to other ones(say ext2) for both support of larger files and better disk checking...at the time of distro x, version y, filesystem D(that you may be familiar with) hadn't even come out and was probably an improvement over Z, so I'd wager less bytes per block than filesytem D but more than...." ...or so could be a possible response...I hope I am getting my point through, though of course you're the one to have lived through the day and not me and I'm sure your reply was what you felt best, at the time.
- etherael 16y ago
  You're right actually; I've considered that a few times, but decided against it based on the guy's reaction to my reaction, he wasn't hedging for another answer, it was just "Ah, right." That particular thought did only occur to me sometime later though so could be it certainly.
- dieterrams 16y ago
  If that's what they were really looking for, then they're really just testing whether you can figure out what they're really looking for, whether they know it or not. If you want someone to demonstrate their thought process, you give them a tricky problem and just tell them to solve it out loud. If it's a good problem, they're not going to be able to fake having an awesome thought process. "I'd google it" is exactly the right answer, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, it's never the answer interviewers want to hear. Regardless of whether they've asked good questions, it's invariably one of the most common responses interviewees will make when they don't know the answer. Whether or not the interviewer had a justified expectation that you should know the answer, "I'd google it" immediately gets you downranked by association with people who don't know their shit.
  - imajes 16y ago
    I'd agree. I'd rather hire someone who's willing to know what he/she does or doesn't know, and rather than pussy foot around the issue, trying to remember it, google's the answer, fixes the problem and moves on.
Caligula 16y ago
I think if I was in your situation and got that type of question I would have said 'id bing it'
- cletus 16y ago
  Joel Spolsky gave a Google Tech Talk about Stackoverflow. At one point someone asked him about something he said. He had to look it up. He opened up IE and did a search on live.com (pre-bing). It got a good laugh.
  - joubert 16y ago
    Plus, doesn't stacckoverflow run on the microsoft stack?
    - subbu 16y ago
      Yes it is: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/09/what-was-stack-overflow-built-with/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/09/what-was-stack-overflo...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- InfinityX0 16y ago
  First time I've laughed out loud at a Ycombinator comment.. well done.
rythie 16y ago
Typically if you get that one right, there is a serious of follow up questions each getting deeper and deeper into the understanding of the same topic.
- paulgb 16y ago
  That seems to assume that the deeper understanding necessitates the trivia. One can understand how a filesystem works without knowing the default block size.
jeebusroxors 16y ago
This sounds like a question used judge character. I'm not sure it makes sense to be doing such a thing at google, but sometimes these kinds of things are asked more to judge your reaction rather than your answer. I'm sure you replied confidently, but others may get flustered, which could be a sign of how they act under pressure. And of course there are those who would answer take a best guess stab rather than appear to not know the answer which would be undesirable as well.
angstrom 16y ago
I'd say I know it's greater or equal to 512 (depending how far back the date of the interview).
amalcon 16y ago
Perhaps a more "sysadmin-ish" answer would have been something more like "Whatever the command 'echo 1 > /tmp/one && du -h /tmp/one && rm /tmp/one' prints".
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- scdlbx 16y ago
  That doesn't exactly work. echo "a" > a; du -sh a; rm a 2.0K a dumpe2fs /dev/sda1 | grep -i 'Block size' Block size: 1024
  - amalcon 16y ago
    Interesting. Still, I'm no sysadmin; the point is that demonstrating you know how to find something out short of google is better than... well, not.
  - mds 16y ago
    I'm curious how you got that. Are you sure "a" is on /dev/sda1? What OS and FS are you using? $ du -sh /tmp/a 4.0K a $ tune2fs -l /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 | grep "Block size" Block size: 4096
    - scdlbx 16y ago
      Positive that 'a' is on /dev/sda1. Running CentOS 5.5 and /dev/sda1 is ext3. I get similar behavior on the other partition: echo "a" > a; du -sh a 8.0K a dumpe2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 | grep "Block size" Block size: 4096 Though if I 'touch' the files to create them, they are the blocksize. Which seems odd, since on my AIX and HP-UX boxes that gives files of size 0.

cletus 16y ago

That does seem like a strange question but then again I'm not a sysadmin so I really don't know what's reasonable. I'll frame this in what I know, which is programming. I think it's entirely reasonable to ask someone how a hashtable or even a quick sort (or some other O(n log n) sort) works because programmers should be familiar with that even if 99.9% of the time (if not 100% of the time) you're using a HashMap or std::map or dict or whatever. But number of inodes does seem somewhat esoteric.

etherael 16y ago
In my view, it's stupid because it implies that if you're the kind of person that bothers to attempt to commit irrelevant or at best situationally relevant things like this to memory as a matter of course, you probably aren't making optimal use of your mental resources. I found it pretty ironic actually as that's exactly the kind of thing we have search engines for.
- megablast 16y ago
  On the other hand, if you are constantly working with certain systems, you will know this stuff. If they ask me something esoteric about a language or API that I know really well, I can answer all the tricky questions, or explain how I think it would work. If it is something I use rarely, then I could not. Anyway, isn't block size standard across all OS?
  - etherael 16y ago
    Just checked the mkfs.ext4 man page and no, that doesn't seem to be the case. This was about five years ago so the precise question I can't perfectly remember, but the nature of it was as stated; It was a question about a specific filesystem setting default value, on a specific version of a specific distribution of linux, inode size, bytes per inode or bytes per block. Apologies for sounding a little addled but it's been five years since I have been a systems administrator so it's all melted together in my memory.
  - barrkel 16y ago
    I think these kinds of specific questions are justified, but only on the basis that (a) it tests that the candidate really does or has worked in this field in depth, and (b) you have a bunch of other similar questions, and knowing the answer to just one or two of them counts as a pass. Basically, it's like throwing spears into an opaque pool, hoping to find evidence of the salmon of knowledge.
    - etherael 16y ago
      Oh, should add, the specific version was not one I had had any experience with, nor claimed to have had any experience with.
      - kaens 16y ago
        I could totally see asking someone that question if they said that they were intimately familiar with some distro or another. Outside of that context, it seems like a really bad question. Maybe there was another purpose to the question (like seeing how you reacted to bad questions), or you just had a shitty interviewer.
    - tkahn6 16y ago
      FWIW I laughed out loud at "salmon of knowledge". Great analogy.
      - barrkel 16y ago

shubhamharnal 16y ago

Perhaps the point was not merely regurgitation of facts but an analysis of your thought-process. It is almost impossible to have such an esoteric bit of trivia but you could have at least given them something: "...Well I dunno but let's see...Filesystem Z(let's say reiserfs)...so this one's pretty good with really large files...its preferred to other ones(say ext2) for both support of larger files and better disk checking...at the time of distro x, version y, filesystem D(that you may be familiar with) hadn't even come out and was probably an improvement over Z, so I'd wager less bytes per block than filesytem D but more than...." ...or so could be a possible response...I hope I am getting my point through, though of course you're the one to have lived through the day and not me and I'm sure your reply was what you felt best, at the time.

etherael 16y ago
You're right actually; I've considered that a few times, but decided against it based on the guy's reaction to my reaction, he wasn't hedging for another answer, it was just "Ah, right." That particular thought did only occur to me sometime later though so could be it certainly.
dieterrams 16y ago
If that's what they were really looking for, then they're really just testing whether you can figure out what they're really looking for, whether they know it or not. If you want someone to demonstrate their thought process, you give them a tricky problem and just tell them to solve it out loud. If it's a good problem, they're not going to be able to fake having an awesome thought process. "I'd google it" is exactly the right answer, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, it's never the answer interviewers want to hear. Regardless of whether they've asked good questions, it's invariably one of the most common responses interviewees will make when they don't know the answer. Whether or not the interviewer had a justified expectation that you should know the answer, "I'd google it" immediately gets you downranked by association with people who don't know their shit.
- imajes 16y ago
  I'd agree. I'd rather hire someone who's willing to know what he/she does or doesn't know, and rather than pussy foot around the issue, trying to remember it, google's the answer, fixes the problem and moves on.

Caligula 16y ago

I think if I was in your situation and got that type of question I would have said 'id bing it'

cletus 16y ago
Joel Spolsky gave a Google Tech Talk about Stackoverflow. At one point someone asked him about something he said. He had to look it up. He opened up IE and did a search on live.com (pre-bing). It got a good laugh.
- joubert 16y ago
  Plus, doesn't stacckoverflow run on the microsoft stack?
  - subbu 16y ago
    Yes it is: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/09/what-was-stack-overflow-built-with/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/09/what-was-stack-overflo...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
InfinityX0 16y ago
First time I've laughed out loud at a Ycombinator comment.. well done.

rythie 16y ago

Typically if you get that one right, there is a serious of follow up questions each getting deeper and deeper into the understanding of the same topic.

paulgb 16y ago
That seems to assume that the deeper understanding necessitates the trivia. One can understand how a filesystem works without knowing the default block size.

jeebusroxors 16y ago

This sounds like a question used judge character. I'm not sure it makes sense to be doing such a thing at google, but sometimes these kinds of things are asked more to judge your reaction rather than your answer. I'm sure you replied confidently, but others may get flustered, which could be a sign of how they act under pressure. And of course there are those who would answer take a best guess stab rather than appear to not know the answer which would be undesirable as well.

angstrom 16y ago

I'd say I know it's greater or equal to 512 (depending how far back the date of the interview).

amalcon 16y ago

Perhaps a more "sysadmin-ish" answer would have been something more like "Whatever the command 'echo 1 > /tmp/one && du -h /tmp/one && rm /tmp/one' prints".

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
scdlbx 16y ago
That doesn't exactly work. echo "a" > a; du -sh a; rm a 2.0K a dumpe2fs /dev/sda1 | grep -i 'Block size' Block size: 1024
- amalcon 16y ago
  Interesting. Still, I'm no sysadmin; the point is that demonstrating you know how to find something out short of google is better than... well, not.
- mds 16y ago
  I'm curious how you got that. Are you sure "a" is on /dev/sda1? What OS and FS are you using? $ du -sh /tmp/a 4.0K a $ tune2fs -l /dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 | grep "Block size" Block size: 4096
  - scdlbx 16y ago
    Positive that 'a' is on /dev/sda1. Running CentOS 5.5 and /dev/sda1 is ext3. I get similar behavior on the other partition: echo "a" > a; du -sh a 8.0K a dumpe2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 | grep "Block size" Block size: 4096 Though if I 'touch' the files to create them, they are the blocksize. Which seems odd, since on my AIX and HP-UX boxes that gives files of size 0.