5 ms·
Same experience here with the trivia questions. They called me out of the blue about 10 years ago and said they wanted to interview me. So I said OK. Later, dur
by w8rbt 8y ago
Same experience here with the trivia questions. They called me out of the blue about 10 years ago and said they wanted to interview me. So I said OK. Later, during the interview, the questions were largely trivia. How do you remove a file using the rm command when the file is named -f?
I was like, what sane person would name a file -f? Anyway, after I got over the shock of the question... you can ./-f, use the absolute /path/to/-f or -- -f and maybe other ways too.
- rorykoehler 8y agoSurely the correct answer is you Google how to do it!?
- jstimpfle 8y agoThese questions are supposed to work as a proxy for experience. Everybody can google the answer to trivia, but if an applicant doesn't know the answer by heart that's an indication for lack of experience.
- crdoconnor 8y agoExcept it's a terrible indicator and an abysmal proxy.
- jstimpfle 8y agoWhy is that?
- rorykoehler 8y agoI still google things i know how to do that i don't use often because it's quicker to copy and paste than to try remember details that are vague in my memory. The example given is exactly one of those cases. Even Jeff Atwood tweeted that he does this the other day.
- jstimpfle 8y agoWe all do it. There is no contradiction with the meaning of "Proxy". It's not a requirement that you know the answer to all of these questions.
- killaken2000 8y agoI laughed so hard at this. Thank you.
- jstimpfle 8y agoDon't laugh at me. I didn't even state whether I support these questions. But if you don't know your way around basic shell gotchas or can't tell how many bytes are in a MAC address (or can at least conclude it by remembering working with them), you likely haven't worked enough on the command-line / haven't worked enough in networking. There's nothing funny about it. If you don't agree you're just a bitter cynic.