I am an IT person, started out as a Solaris engineer, moved to a LAMP admin, and now a VisualStudio VB.NET programmer in addition to my management duties and responsibilities, including hiring.
We had a new company handed down as an approved HR firm, so I started interviewing. Now, I've had a long held practice of asking two very basic "programmers quiz" questions; one that relates to SQL and one that relates to general coding practices. I was starting to doubt that they were an effective part of my interview style until recently when someone failed both.
He came from a recruiting firm, listed himself as a C# person, had verified references and promised 8 years of experience.
He did not know that you needed an update statement to change data that was in a table, nor did he know that in certain cases a select/case/switch (I would have accepted either) structure would be more elegant than an if/elseif/elseif structure for a certain task.
Everyone else I've ever interviewed has gotten those two right.
I don't believe in a big 10 page questionnaire; I think that's pretty stupid. I consider myself an above average PHP programmer for instance, but it's been a year and a half. In one week on the job I'd be right back to polished, and in one month I'd be fully 5.0 ready I'm sure - but give me some tricky test on the differences between 5.0 and 4.1 syntax right now or tomorrow and I'm pretty sure I'd fail it, and you'd screw yourself out of a good programmer.
I'm not arguing that testing is great; it should be done in small doses, and its limitations should be understood.
But I see way too many tech people responding "QQ oh noes the bad man wants to ask me if I know what I am doing/wrists"... and I have a different perspective on the matter.
Grow up. I'm going to keep asking my two quiz questions thank you very much. I almost hired that guy.
I get it; self supporting monopoly etc. etc., hegemony requires both office and Windows. But what about all this MS Live stuff they're doing. They could port the.NET framework (or something like it) to Linux, thereby embracing and extending Linux itself. Binaries only, evade the GPL, and then release "Office Live" for the.NET Framework, which of course comes with IE. Discount it even a little bit. Now change your pricing structure a tiny bit: i.e. Windows includes the.NET framework free, but the one for Linux costs $100 at BestBuy + $15/year for updates.
Now: include AOL (profit sharing with Time Warner of course), WMP, MSN Toolbar, MSN sign up links, ads for Microsoft Mice and keyboards... all only for the.NET framework on Linux. Its W0L: Windows on Linux.
Now: ensure that the Linux.NET framework only works well with some odd kernel revision, and after a year or so, ship a MS drop in replacement kernel that works wonderfully with.NET, but breaks Samba, Apache, NetFilter, Firefox and OO something fierce; but includes a Windows Server CAL and an Exchange CAL for $150 more. Voila: Linux problem solved.
(Of course there would be considerable challenges in all of this, but they're well funded, and smarter than we usually give them credit for.)
I choose to argue with the quality issue. Quality is very, very important when it comes to voice communication. In business, or with personal conversations, little nuances of inflection, delay, volume etc. mean a lot. I'm pretty annoyed with cell phone quality and timing issues, I won't even use cell phones for much beyond short tactical use: "I'm outside your office building to give you a ride, the door is locked, I'll meet you outside" and the like, unless I'm really stuck.
I would use it, but it lacks thread support - namely proper threaded SMP support. The other thing is that pesky non-automatic kernel config problem. I guess I'm a Solaris loser, but proper modules with hardware detection is a lot more fun than recompiling the kernel in production.
To be more to the point, I'd use OpenBSD for more than just firewalls. I love OpenBSD.
I got a job in a mixed NT / Solaris environment with an MCP for NT Server 4, a previous job doing tech support like you are now and lots of Linux. I called it PC-Based UNIX on the resume, of course...
Since then they have paid for all the O'Reilly books I can eat and are sending me for Solaris training soon. We now use Linux for a few things that Solaris would be too expensive for, like router monitoring with mrtg. I find it as stable as SolarisX86 with a much better GUI. Some of the commands are a bit different. I had to hunt down top [http://www.sunfreeware.com], for one thing.
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I am an IT person, started out as a Solaris engineer, moved to a LAMP admin, and now a VisualStudio VB.NET programmer in addition to my management duties and responsibilities, including hiring.
We had a new company handed down as an approved HR firm, so I started interviewing. Now, I've had a long held practice of asking two very basic "programmers quiz" questions; one that relates to SQL and one that relates to general coding practices. I was starting to doubt that they were an effective part of my interview style until recently when someone failed both.
He came from a recruiting firm, listed himself as a C# person, had verified references and promised 8 years of experience.
He did not know that you needed an update statement to change data that was in a table, nor did he know that in certain cases a select/case/switch (I would have accepted either) structure would be more elegant than an if/elseif/elseif structure for a certain task.
Everyone else I've ever interviewed has gotten those two right.
I don't believe in a big 10 page questionnaire; I think that's pretty stupid. I consider myself an above average PHP programmer for instance, but it's been a year and a half. In one week on the job I'd be right back to polished, and in one month I'd be fully 5.0 ready I'm sure - but give me some tricky test on the differences between 5.0 and 4.1 syntax right now or tomorrow and I'm pretty sure I'd fail it, and you'd screw yourself out of a good programmer.
I'm not arguing that testing is great; it should be done in small doses, and its limitations should be understood.
But I see way too many tech people responding "QQ oh noes the bad man wants to ask me if I know what I am doing /wrists" ... and I have a different perspective on the matter.
Grow up. I'm going to keep asking my two quiz questions thank you very much. I almost hired that guy.
lol@u
When an industry saves money, it doesn't reduce prices to end users.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/esa2/author.html
AEleen Frisch, yo. Mad pr0pz.
I get it; self supporting monopoly etc. etc., hegemony requires both office and Windows. But what about all this MS Live stuff they're doing. They could port the .NET framework (or something like it) to Linux, thereby embracing and extending Linux itself. Binaries only, evade the GPL, and then release "Office Live" for the .NET Framework, which of course comes with IE. Discount it even a little bit. Now change your pricing structure a tiny bit: i.e. Windows includes the .NET framework free, but the one for Linux costs $100 at BestBuy + $15/year for updates.
.NET framework on Linux. Its W0L: Windows on Linux.
.NET framework only works well with some odd kernel revision, and after a year or so, ship a MS drop in replacement kernel that works wonderfully with .NET, but breaks Samba, Apache, NetFilter, Firefox and OO something fierce; but includes a Windows Server CAL and an Exchange CAL for $150 more. Voila: Linux problem solved.
Now: include AOL (profit sharing with Time Warner of course), WMP, MSN Toolbar, MSN sign up links, ads for Microsoft Mice and keyboards... all only for the
Now: ensure that the Linux
(Of course there would be considerable challenges in all of this, but they're well funded, and smarter than we usually give them credit for.)
I choose to argue with the quality issue. Quality is very, very important when it comes to voice communication. In business, or with personal conversations, little nuances of inflection, delay, volume etc. mean a lot. I'm pretty annoyed with cell phone quality and timing issues, I won't even use cell phones for much beyond short tactical use: "I'm outside your office building to give you a ride, the door is locked, I'll meet you outside" and the like, unless I'm really stuck.
It's just not the same thing.
This is America? Anyone have the demographics stats on slashdot visitors? Are you *really* sure that 'this is America'?
I would use it, but it lacks thread support - namely proper threaded SMP support. The other thing is that pesky non-automatic kernel config problem. I guess I'm a Solaris loser, but proper modules with hardware detection is a lot more fun than recompiling the kernel in production.
To be more to the point, I'd use OpenBSD for more than just firewalls. I love OpenBSD.
I got a job in a mixed NT / Solaris environment with an MCP for NT Server 4, a previous job doing tech support like you are now and lots of Linux. I called it PC-Based UNIX on the resume, of course...
Since then they have paid for all the O'Reilly books I can eat and are sending me for Solaris training soon. We now use Linux for a few things that Solaris would be too expensive for, like router monitoring with mrtg. I find it as stable as SolarisX86 with a much better GUI. Some of the commands are a bit different. I had to hunt down top [http://www.sunfreeware.com], for one thing.