Yeah I'm mostly doing a throwback to the time that dude told me mysql is less secure than mssql because it's open source and clearly I don't care about security.
I mean he's kinda right but for all the wrong reasons and I don't think he realized it.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
His defense was "anyone can look at the source code and hack it"
yeah well imagine microsoft doing what they did in the late 90s pretending a major hack wasn't a thing and leaving systems unprotected, at least with open source it'll be patched within the week, if not day.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
His defense was "anyone can look at the source code and hack it"
yeah well imagine microsoft doing what they did in the late 90s pretending a major hack wasn't a thing and leaving systems unprotected, at least with open source it'll be patched within the week, if not day.
he's a moron and a scoundrel
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I wish I could post the picture here but in our office we got 2 55" TV's on mobile stands in for meeting rooms in that we set up today. so naturally we grabbed pictures of two IT staffers who are not here today, put their pictures on the TV's and put the TV's at their desks in place of their chairs. And have left them there most of the day.
The chauvinism some people have against open-source is puzzling.
I get it if you're worried about the legal ramifications of incorporating GPL/copyleft code into production.
But that has nothing to do with its technical merits
When I was interviewing a few months back for that sweet gig I turned down, this was the attitude they had during my interview when I talked about experimenting with open source solutions, and was a small contributing factor to my decision.
The chauvinism some people have against open-source is puzzling.
I get it if you're worried about the legal ramifications of incorporating GPL/copyleft code into production.
But that has nothing to do with its technical merits
When I was interviewing a few months back for that sweet gig I turned down, this was the attitude they had during my interview when I talked about experimenting with open source solutions, and was a small contributing factor to my decision.
Now that our CIO is back from medical leave I'll talk to him about open-sourcing a couple of our non-business-related Go packages we've developed internally. Since we use so much open source from all over the place I'd like to contribute back.
The chauvinism some people have against open-source is puzzling.
I get it if you're worried about the legal ramifications of incorporating GPL/copyleft code into production.
But that has nothing to do with its technical merits
When I was interviewing a few months back for that sweet gig I turned down, this was the attitude they had during my interview when I talked about experimenting with open source solutions, and was a small contributing factor to my decision.
Now that our CIO is back from medical leave I'll talk to him about open-sourcing a couple of our non-business-related Go packages we've developed internally. Since we use so much open source from all over the place I'd like to contribute back.
I wish I could post the picture here but in our office we got 2 55" TV's on mobile stands in for meeting rooms in that we set up today. so naturally we grabbed pictures of two IT staffers who are not here today, put their pictures on the TV's and put the TV's at their desks in place of their chairs. And have left them there most of the day.
It's been quite entertaining.
When the Christmas decorations got taken down, they left the tree for some reason, so someone took an extra work-branded jacket and put it on the tree, and printed out a guest name badge for 'Spruce Willis'. We set it up at an unused desk, and it's still there currently. Someone recently added a pair of googly eyes.
I keep pushing for a service account to be set up for Spruce so we can assign tickets to him.
Whew I had an interview yesterday for a job, my first real job in tech thats not sales and it did not go well at all. Like man, I'm in grad school and worked with networks and computers my whole life but the questions they asked made me feel hella dumb
Whew I had an interview yesterday for a job, my first real job in tech thats not sales and it did not go well at all. Like man, I'm in grad school and worked with networks and computers my whole life but the questions they asked made me feel hella dumb
That's sometimes the point, is to see how you react when you're out of your depth.
Everyone in this industry is floundering at some point or another. For me it's often every fucking second of every fucking day.
IT is knowing exactly what to google and how to apply the knowledge.
This is a skill very few people have, and would make them much better at their jobs regardless. Don't undersell how important being able to research and apply knowledge is. Just because we use google today instead of encyclopedias, research documents, and reference manuals doesn't make it any less important to be able to do.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Had to explain to someone today, in 2019, a grown man with a college degree from what I assume was a college for folks with a normal range of vision, that no - he cannot open PDF files from the Excel application.
I wish I had thought of that. I tried to think of a right answer but ultimately I went with "I know I've worked with this before but I can't think of that off the top of my head"
Hindsight being 20/20 I should have said "I would need to Google that or look it up"
Had to explain to someone today, in 2019, a grown man with a college degree from what I assume was a college for folks with a normal range of vision, that no - he cannot open PDF files from the Excel application.
I'm not convinced that some of my users have enough brain activity to breathe unassisted.
Had to explain to someone today, in 2019, a grown man with a college degree from what I assume was a college for folks with a normal range of vision, that no - he cannot open PDF files from the Excel application.
Given all the other ridiculous crap they've crammed into excel I'm almost surprised it doesn't do that.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
+5
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
When I interviewed for my MSP job they gave me a basic troubleshooting test. Basically he broke a server VM and told me to fix it. I asked if I could look something up on Google and they were fine with it. Evidently a lot of people who interview with the company don't think to even try Google.
Yeah I felt a little suckerpucnhed by it. It was for a security job and I got all the stuff about my home lab and what sort of security experience I have and network work and set up, then they asked me some really basic IT stuff that I haven't thought about since I had a class on it like years ago. Questions like "What port does Ping use" and "Whats the difference between TCP and UDP". All I could do was stall and stare like a deer in headlights.
Yeah I felt a little suckerpucnhed by it. It was for a security job and I got all the stuff about my home lab and what sort of security experience I have and network work and set up, then they asked me some really basic IT stuff that I haven't thought about since I had a class on it like years ago. Questions like "What port does Ping use" and "Whats the difference between TCP and UDP". All I could do was stall and stare like a deer in headlights.
Another thing to keep in mind is that even an interview that you know you blew 100% may not have actually been blown at all.
I've had amazing offers over the years after completely blowing interviews.
Yeah I felt a little suckerpucnhed by it. It was for a security job and I got all the stuff about my home lab and what sort of security experience I have and network work and set up, then they asked me some really basic IT stuff that I haven't thought about since I had a class on it like years ago. Questions like "What port does Ping use" and "Whats the difference between TCP and UDP". All I could do was stall and stare like a deer in headlights.
What port ICMP uses is one of my favorite gotchas. It doesn't use ports. I like to make a UDP joke for the next question but you might not get it.
I consider this a useless fucking question, because it doesn't matter just about ever if you know this off the top of your head or not. Also it's a trick question because ICMP traffic doesn't have ports, so fuck those guys for asking that anyway. But if you really need to know a port number for any given kind of traffic, that information is a 5 second google search away.
and "Whats the difference between TCP and UDP". All I could do was stall and stare like a deer in headlights.
I consider this a useful question because it's more about concept and theory than route memorization of numbers or which check box to click when you see <error message>. I'd rather someone not need to stop and learn networking concepts like TCP and UDP traffic on the job, but it's not a dealbreaker by any means.
I'm on the fence on if I think these sort of quizzes are really any use in interviews, overall. I mean.. we once had a guy answer the question "What's a PST?" with "Pacific Standard Time." Did he freeze up and shit himself, or was he a functional idiot? Don't know!
When I'm interviewing somebody, I deliberately ask increasingly difficult technical questions until I get to something they don't know, specifically because I want to see how they handle it.
I try to be nice about it. I want people to be comfortable. I'm not going to ask stupid trick questions like "what port is ICMP?"
But yeah I want somebody to say "oh, I don't know, I've never needed that. Hmm. I guess I'd figure it out by looking in firewall logs or I'd just ask Google." If they can tell me that with a straight face, without bullshitting me, without contrition, that's a huge plus.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
+5
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
An example of a good 'trick' interview question I encountered recently was "A domain controller died a couple months ago - how would you go about restoring it?"
The answer of course is to not restore it and instead to spin up a new DC.
Yeah I felt a little suckerpucnhed by it. It was for a security job and I got all the stuff about my home lab and what sort of security experience I have and network work and set up, then they asked me some really basic IT stuff that I haven't thought about since I had a class on it like years ago. Questions like "What port does Ping use" and "Whats the difference between TCP and UDP". All I could do was stall and stare like a deer in headlights.
What port ICMP uses is one of my favorite gotchas. It doesn't use ports. I like to make a UDP joke for the next question but you might not get it.
Oh yeah, I know that now. And now I'll never forget that about ICMP or that TCP numbers packets and can recall them to avoid packet loss where as UDP is faster and has more throughput but it uses datagrams and data loss is more probable.
When I'm interviewing somebody, I deliberately ask increasingly difficult technical questions until I get to something they don't know, specifically because I want to see how they handle it.
I try to be nice about it. I want people to be comfortable. I'm not going to ask stupid trick questions like "what port is ICMP?"
But yeah I want somebody to say "oh, I don't know, I've never needed that. Hmm. I guess I'd figure it out by looking in firewall logs or I'd just ask Google." If they can tell me that with a straight face, without bullshitting me, without contrition, that's a huge plus.
Yeah thinking back on it I think this is where I messed up. At once point my interviewer said "Its nothing to get worked up over" and I didn't think I was getting worked up, but I just said "No I know, its just frustrating because I know I know this, I've worked with this before, but I can't think of it off the top of my head right now"
It would have been better if I just said "Ya know, I'm not sure, I'd have to look that up"
Well live and learn, this is my first interview for a position like this where I was asked questions like that. Up till now its been the usual "tell me about a time you did the thing?"
See that's why the trick questions are dumb. Even when you fail it, it didn't tell them anything meaningful, and they were prompted to try and let you off the hook. I'm willing to bet real money your response to those questions doesn't have any actual impact on whether they call you again or what they say.
An example of a good 'trick' interview question I encountered recently was "A domain controller died a couple months ago - how would you go about restoring it?"
The answer of course is to not restore it and instead to spin up a new DC.
*nods*
Seems legit
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
See that's why the trick questions are dumb. Even when you fail it, it didn't tell them anything meaningful, and they were prompted to try and let you off the hook. I'm willing to bet real money your response to those questions doesn't have any actual impact on whether they call you again or what they say.
Trick questions are worse than dumb. Even people who know the answers are affected negatively by them: They don't know if this person actually knows that this is a trick question. If they spout off the correct answer, they might make themselves look like a know-it-all asshole "well acktshually..."
+3
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
If you prime your question with a particular solution you are setting the interviewee up to fail. They might triage to or consider a better solution in the wild but because you are specifically asking them to solve the problem a particular way and the purpose of the interview is for them to make you happy, they will likely bend over backwards to do things your way. For all they know you are intentionally giving them an impossible task to "see how they think". And nobody wants to be "that guy", per above.
Some trick questions are fine but a lot of them are designed to make the interviewer feel superior rather than to determine the skillset or fit of the applicant.
Posts
I mean he's kinda right but for all the wrong reasons and I don't think he realized it.
I get it if you're worried about the legal ramifications of incorporating GPL/copyleft code into production.
But that has nothing to do with its technical merits
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
yeah well imagine microsoft doing what they did in the late 90s pretending a major hack wasn't a thing and leaving systems unprotected, at least with open source it'll be patched within the week, if not day.
he's a moron and a scoundrel
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It's been quite entertaining.
Because hacking without access to the source code never happens.
When I was interviewing a few months back for that sweet gig I turned down, this was the attitude they had during my interview when I talked about experimenting with open source solutions, and was a small contributing factor to my decision.
BRANCH-###
Any extra details go into location/comments
Now that our CIO is back from medical leave I'll talk to him about open-sourcing a couple of our non-business-related Go packages we've developed internally. Since we use so much open source from all over the place I'd like to contribute back.
But then you'll get hacked.
When the Christmas decorations got taken down, they left the tree for some reason, so someone took an extra work-branded jacket and put it on the tree, and printed out a guest name badge for 'Spruce Willis'. We set it up at an unused desk, and it's still there currently. Someone recently added a pair of googly eyes.
I keep pushing for a service account to be set up for Spruce so we can assign tickets to him.
You should. Googly eyes are an essential part of all office supplies collections.
That's sometimes the point, is to see how you react when you're out of your depth.
Everyone in this industry is floundering at some point or another. For me it's often every fucking second of every fucking day.
there are systems I manage every single day that I have no idea at all how they actually work.
This is a skill very few people have, and would make them much better at their jobs regardless. Don't undersell how important being able to research and apply knowledge is. Just because we use google today instead of encyclopedias, research documents, and reference manuals doesn't make it any less important to be able to do.
Hindsight being 20/20 I should have said "I would need to Google that or look it up"
I'm not convinced that some of my users have enough brain activity to breathe unassisted.
Given all the other ridiculous crap they've crammed into excel I'm almost surprised it doesn't do that.
Another thing to keep in mind is that even an interview that you know you blew 100% may not have actually been blown at all.
I've had amazing offers over the years after completely blowing interviews.
What port ICMP uses is one of my favorite gotchas. It doesn't use ports. I like to make a UDP joke for the next question but you might not get it.
I consider this a useless fucking question, because it doesn't matter just about ever if you know this off the top of your head or not. Also it's a trick question because ICMP traffic doesn't have ports, so fuck those guys for asking that anyway. But if you really need to know a port number for any given kind of traffic, that information is a 5 second google search away.
I consider this a useful question because it's more about concept and theory than route memorization of numbers or which check box to click when you see <error message>. I'd rather someone not need to stop and learn networking concepts like TCP and UDP traffic on the job, but it's not a dealbreaker by any means.
I'm on the fence on if I think these sort of quizzes are really any use in interviews, overall. I mean.. we once had a guy answer the question "What's a PST?" with "Pacific Standard Time." Did he freeze up and shit himself, or was he a functional idiot? Don't know!
I actually do this
No really
I especially like putting googly eyes on our corporate art
I'd show you but then you'd know where I work
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I try to be nice about it. I want people to be comfortable. I'm not going to ask stupid trick questions like "what port is ICMP?"
But yeah I want somebody to say "oh, I don't know, I've never needed that. Hmm. I guess I'd figure it out by looking in firewall logs or I'd just ask Google." If they can tell me that with a straight face, without bullshitting me, without contrition, that's a huge plus.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I don't?
It's an EverQuest/WoW thing
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The answer of course is to not restore it and instead to spin up a new DC.
Oh yeah, I know that now. And now I'll never forget that about ICMP or that TCP numbers packets and can recall them to avoid packet loss where as UDP is faster and has more throughput but it uses datagrams and data loss is more probable.
I will remember these things to my grave
Yeah thinking back on it I think this is where I messed up. At once point my interviewer said "Its nothing to get worked up over" and I didn't think I was getting worked up, but I just said "No I know, its just frustrating because I know I know this, I've worked with this before, but I can't think of it off the top of my head right now"
It would have been better if I just said "Ya know, I'm not sure, I'd have to look that up"
Well live and learn, this is my first interview for a position like this where I was asked questions like that. Up till now its been the usual "tell me about a time you did the thing?"
Pure Shit Time
That is what pst files are.
*nods*
Seems legit
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Trick questions are worse than dumb. Even people who know the answers are affected negatively by them: They don't know if this person actually knows that this is a trick question. If they spout off the correct answer, they might make themselves look like a know-it-all asshole "well acktshually..."
Some trick questions are fine but a lot of them are designed to make the interviewer feel superior rather than to determine the skillset or fit of the applicant.