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That's fine to ask but a non-answer gives you almost no information other than perhaps that the candidate never bothered to learn in great detail exactly how it
by jsd1982 4y ago
That's fine to ask but a non-answer gives you almost no information other than perhaps that the candidate never bothered to learn in great detail exactly how it all works because it's never been important enough to spend time on.
If you're looking for strong diagnostic skills, then ask those questions geared to give you direct information as opposed to trying to weed it out from the answer to a vague high-level process description question. If the candidate has no idea why you're asking then any answer at all should be satisfactory.
- zamadatix 4y agoWeeding out how to approach well when the ask isn't clear or you don't have full understanding of the problem space is a great skill to select for and doesn't require any technical knowledge at all about what the question is asking. A true non-answer (not just a lack of deep technical understanding on what really happens) should hint to further investigate how strong a candidate is in that area not hint they aren't technically savvy.
- theamk 4y agoIt's hard for me to imagine any strong Unix systems engineer that knows nothing about that topic. The whole tty subsystem is one of the core parts of *nix systems, and basic knowledge of it is required for many complex debugging questions. And the open ended question is great because it allows candidate to showcase what they know. Have no idea how PTYs are allocated by kernel? No problem, you can talk how shells work.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]