Slashdot Mirror
How Do You Interview A Sysadmin Candidate?
benedict writes: "The article No Shortage of Programmers? sparked a really interesting thread about how to interview programmers. Being a systems administrator, I am curious about the Slashdot community's collective wisdom on how to interview sysadmins. I have come up with a few questions of my own to prime the pump. 'What is tcpdump? What is it good for?' 'How about truss/ktrace/strace? What are they good for?' 'What's the largest number of machines you've maintained? What have you done to make it easier on yourself (e.g. what types of automation, file distribution, etc.)' 'Do you use source code control? What for?' I would also present a couple of 'hypothetical' situations from my own experience and ask how people would approach them. How about you: what kinds of questions would you ask, what situations would you describe, what kinds of answers would you look for?"
emacs or vi? Wrong answer, and the interview is over.
> Not every sysadmin knows everything
No sysadmin knows anywhere near everything about whatever little corner of the profession they specialise in. They leave knowing everything to 31337 Star Wars obsessed Linux jerkwads on slashdot.