nanog mailing list archives

RE: questions asked during network engineer interview


From: <adamv0025 () netconsultings com>
Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2020 21:26:50 +0100

William Herrin
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2020 8:32 PM

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 12:17 PM Michael Thomas <mike () mtcc com> wrote:
On 7/14/20 12:09 PM, William Herrin wrote:
On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:12 PM Mehmet Akcin <mehmet () akcin net>
wrote:
I am hosting a live show a few times a month about internet
infrastructure and today's topics were, your favorite questions
asked network engineers - you can watch the recording here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3pvikTrF0M

if you have suggestions on topics to cover helping network operations
engineering that you want to see in here, please feel free to contact me off-
list, and let's create unique content that can be helpful to others.

"What happens when you type www.google.com in your browser bar
and
hit enter?" is one of my favorite questions. Half the field of
computing happens next. Keyboard interrupts fire. Bits are poked in
dram, sram, maybe even tcam. Packets are sent. Fonts are composed
into pixels.
There's a crazy amount you can talk about and the right answer is:
string things together in order for 5 or 10 minutes without getting
anything horribly wrong.

Oh, I thought this was a trick question of whether it takes you
directly to google, or does a search.

That's a good start. First thing the browser does decide whether that's a URL
or a search question. How does it decide? And then what happens?

I will prompt you to keep talking. After all, I'm rooting for you to succeed so
that I can hire you.

The question is vague enough for the candidate to start talking just about anything they like. 
What happens where? In the world? In the universe? In my body?
Depending on the position you're hiring for you may want to include the "where" as well to narrow down the scope of the 
talk (to say "finger tips" if you hire a brain surgeon or 2020 laureate of Kavli Prize for Neuroscience for discover of 
pressure receptors, or simply to "network" if hiring network engineer, etc...). 
 
adam
 


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