Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas <mike () mtcc com>]

On 7/14/20 1:25 PM, Miles Fidelman wrote:
> - If someone asks me to do an algorithm or coding question, I 
> generally tell them to pound sand; that I generally use the language 
> statement or a standard library, or look up hard stuff in Knuth - and 
> then ask them if they'd like to discuss the specifics about how I 
> might approach finding/developing specialized algorithms for the 
> problems I'll be working on.  (I refuse to be a code monkey on a 
> string - and if they insist, I know that there's no way I'd want to 
> work for them.)  I'm reminded of a story an old-line DEC engineer told 
> me - at his interview they asked him about converting an octal number 
> to hex, or some such - he basically asked if they had an octal-hex 
> calculator handy (remember the old paper ones?).  After that, the 
> interview went swimmingly - he thought that was kind of a test to see 
> how he'd react (who really wants to hire someone who's going to start 
> doing paper calculations of something silly).
I got rejected once because he wanted me to write strstr() on a 
whiteboard and it was insufficiently Knuth blessed, which I admitted and 
said in real life I'd just look it up, because you know, that's what 
resourceful engineers do. That wasn't good enough.

Mike, I didn't even know it was programming interview so it took me 
aback even more