Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Mel Beckman <mel () beckman org>]

Mark,

There are a slew of fine SDN products out there, from VMware NSX-T in big enterprise to Ubiquiti UniFiOS in SMBs, and 
lots of other products aimed at various market niches. What failed about the original SDN academic vision, more or 
less, was standardized, vendor-agnostic SDN based on protocols such as OpenFlow. Sure, a standardized platform would be 
nice, but you can’t blame vendors for wanting to differentiate their products to gain marketshare. OpenFlow never 
really delivered in a way that any vendors could build a competitive product around. HP tried, but, well, here we are.

The goal SDN was created for was centralized management with good automation built in. Nobody ever promised single-pane 
management of multiple vendors’ network elements. Nobody promised that because there is no way to make a living selling 
that.

THAT’S what SDN means to you. :)

 -mel


> On Jul 20, 2020, at 9:55 PM, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka () seacom com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 20/Jul/20 23:59, Brandon Martin wrote:
>
> > Pass given to those who cram them into a "certificates" or "specifics"
> > line or similar in order to get around HR filters, limit them to major
> > certs (or ones your HR dept. specifically demanded), and don't really
> > mention them otherwise.  Bear in mind as well that, even if your
> > hiring process doesn't demand them, others' will, and many people have
> > a standard-ish resume with application-specific cover letter.
>
> When SDN was all the rage in the middle of the past decade, our HR
> department wanted to hire someone in this field and asked me what type
> of qualifications and certifications they should be looking for. Well, I
> told them to look for someone who had enough will and time to figure out
> what it means to us, and the patience to experiment, fail and experiment
> again, without losing any steam or confidence, and take a pass on any
> SDN certifications recommended by our "recruiting consultants".
>
> We ended up hiring a regular (but very good) network engineer who had
> recently taken up an interest in understanding and writing software to
> perform repetitive tasks. It was just a shame they chose not join at the
> last minute, but we weren't the worse off for it either.
>
> At the time, everyone and their arm rest were offering some kind of
> SDN-workshop-certification thingy.
>
> Suffice it to say, to this day, we still don't know what SDN means to
> us, hehe.
>
> Mark.