Tool to build RPSL objects and push it to IRR

[Douglas Fischer]

TL;DR.
There are several tools[1] to automate the creation of Prefix Filtering on
Internet Routing.
I want the opposite!
A tool to help-me to create/alter/delete IRR Objects based on the
information of my Cone.


Sad history
---
For a long time, I'm creating some auxiliary scripts to do the repetitive
job to our team.

I'm not a good dev! I even wouldn't say that I'm a dev.(I'm studying to
improve)

One of these jobs is to create and maintain the IRR Objects related to our
small ITP operation.
So I created a horrible Frankenstein... Based o pure bash, with a lot of
SED and AWK, that only I can understand.
And even for me, takes at least a half-day of immersion to change anything
and don't break what is working.

(I'm pretty sure that this history is familiar to all of you...)




And then...
I am looking for a tool that can help to:
- Based on some sort o information set (maybe YAML)
- Check if the needed Objects already exists.
  - If not
- Create the RPSL record.
- Push it to IRR (via e-mail as RPSL defines, ou API specifically to
RADB)

Is there already a tool that does what I'm looking for?




Complement:
Objects like AS-SET and Route/Route6 are kind of simple to create!
Aut-num, with all the (mp-)import/export syntax of routing policy, are
mind-breaker to me.
But, Aut-num is not on the first target...



[1] BGPq3, BGPq4, IRRPowerTools, IRRToolset.


-- 
Douglas Fernando Fischer
Engº de Controle e Automação

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Greg Skinner via NANOG]

If you ever decide to revisit this subject, I recall it was covered here in 
this thread started by Bill Herrin 
.

My general feelings on the subject of tech interviews are summarized in the 
“interview anti-loop” section of this article by Steve Yegge 
.   
Although it is targeted to people seeking software engineering jobs at FANG 
(and FANG-like) companies, IMO the general tone is applicable to other tech 
careers, even network engineering.  I have seen numerous articles (and 
subsequent discussions) on this subject on forums such as Quora, Medium, and 
Hacker News.

—gregbo

> On Jul 11, 2020, at 11:34 AM, Mehmet Akcin  wrote:
> 
> hey there,
> 
> 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.
> 
> mehmet
> -- next part --
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL: 
> 
> 

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas]

On 7/13/20 8:16 PM, Greg Skinner via NANOG wrote:
If you ever decide to revisit this subject, I recall it was covered 
here in this thread started by Bill Herrin 
.


My general feelings on the subject of tech interviews are summarized 
in the “interview anti-loop” section of this article by Steve Yegge 
. 
 Although it is targeted to people seeking software engineering jobs 
at FANG (and FANG-like) companies, IMO the general tone is applicable 
to other tech careers, even network engineering.  I have seen numerous 
articles (and subsequent discussions) on this subject on forums such 
as Quora, Medium, and Hacker News.



That blog post is everything that is wrong with software interviews. 
It's fine to ask intricate algorithm questions for somebody fresh out of 
school because what else are you going to ask them? But for somebody 
who's years out of school and has lots of experience, the intricate 
details of various algorithms fade especially ones that you don't use 
very often, or are embedded in library routines you'd be fired for if 
you tried to reinvent them. Telling people they have to go back to 
school for stuff they won't be using on the job is offensive.


My personal method is to devise a problem and actually work with them... 
because that's what I (or others) are going to be doing. How well can 
they get the requirements? How do they zero in on how to solve it? You 
can take this as deep or shallow as you like. Often I'd give it as a 
homework assignment if I liked them.


My personal theory is software interviewing is basically a hazing ritual 
where the interviewers are trying to fluff their own privates, and it's 
almost to a one male. I wrote this post a while ago:


http://rip-van-webble.blogspot.com/2013/07/interviews-as-hazing-rituals.html

Mike




—gregbo

On Jul 11, 2020, at 11:34 AM, Mehmet Akcin > wrote:


hey there,

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.

mehmet
-- next part --
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: 

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Owen DeLong]

> On Jul 14, 2020, at 10:20 , Michael Thomas  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/13/20 8:16 PM, Greg Skinner via NANOG wrote:
>> If you ever decide to revisit this subject, I recall it was covered here in 
>> this thread started by Bill Herrin 
>> .
>> 
>> My general feelings on the subject of tech interviews are summarized in the 
>> “interview anti-loop” section of this article by Steve Yegge 
>> .   
>> Although it is targeted to people seeking software engineering jobs at FANG 
>> (and FANG-like) companies, IMO the general tone is applicable to other tech 
>> careers, even network engineering.  I have seen numerous articles (and 
>> subsequent discussions) on this subject on forums such as Quora, Medium, and 
>> Hacker News.
> 
> That blog post is everything that is wrong with software interviews. It's 
> fine to ask intricate algorithm questions for somebody fresh out of school 
> because what else are you going to ask them? But for somebody who's years out 
> of school and has lots of experience, the intricate details of various 
> algorithms fade especially ones that you don't use very often, or are 
> embedded in library routines you'd be fired for if you tried to reinvent 
> them. Telling people they have to go back to school for stuff they won't be 
> using on the job is offensive.
> 

I once failed a network engineering interview because I couldn’t recite the 
OSPF LSA types by number from memory. It was fine, the fact that was a key 
question in the interview convinced me that I had no more desire to work there 
than they had to hire me.
> My personal method is to devise a problem and actually work with them... 
> because that's what I (or others) are going to be doing. How well can they 
> get the requirements? How do they zero in on how to solve it? You can take 
> this as deep or shallow as you like. Often I'd give it as a homework 
> assignment if I liked them.
> 
I prefer this approach as well. Depending on the level of interviewee, I like 
to pull up a real world scenario from my past and see how they approach it. I’m 
not nearly as concerned if they get to the right solution as I want to see how 
they go about identifying and solving the problem. Do they ask questions that 
narrow their focus and identify the issue, or do they start trying random 
things hoping to stumble across a solution without understanding the problem?

The former moves on to the next steps towards employment. The latter is dropped 
from consideration.
> My personal theory is software interviewing is basically a hazing ritual 
> where the interviewers are trying to fluff their own privates, and it's 
> almost to a one male. I wrote this post a while ago:
> 
> http://rip-van-webble.blogspot.com/2013/07/interviews-as-hazing-rituals.html 
> 
> Mike
> 

Not being a developer (at least not for the last 25+ years), I haven’t done 
many “software” interviews, but I’ve been through network and sysadmin 
interviews that ran the gamut. Frankly, the ones that seemed to be more about 
fluffing privates were the companies I put less focus on going forward. The 
interviewers that seemed to match my style and wanted to see me do real-world 
things like troubleshooting or solving design problems or identifying 
architectural flaws in a proposed solution usually resulted in mutual respect 
and I usually moved forward through the interview processes. On the few 
occasions where I got a job out of a fluffing interview, it almost universally 
turned out to be one I wished I hadn’t taken.

Owen

netflix and ipv6

[Bajpai, Vaibhav]

Hi NANOG,

We measured NETFLIX over v6 for the last couple of years. The paper
describing this research is now online, thought to share:

-- Vaibhav

A Longitudinal View of Netflix: Content Delivery over IPv6 and Content Cache 
Deployments

paper:   https://bit.ly/2toOGWP
slides:  https://bit.ly/2ZoEpap
video:   https://vimeo.com/437111302


--
Vaibhav Bajpai, www.vaibhavbajpai.com

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Shawn L via NANOG]

I completely agree.  One of the people I used to do interviews with would look 
through the resume, etc. and then say something like "this all looks good. Tell 
me about something you've done".  And we'd move on to talk about projects and 
how they tackled it, etc. 
 
We didn't give tests, just questions like  "if we asked you to do this, on 
something you haven't seen or used before, how would you go about it".   Or 
pretend I'm the customer.  I want to do this.  How would you go about it?  it 
wasn't about getting a 'correct' answer, it was about how they went about 
solving the problem.

-Original Message-
From: "Owen DeLong" 
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2020 1:33pm
To: "Michael Thomas" 
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: questions asked during network engineer interview




On Jul 14, 2020, at 10:20 , Michael Thomas <[ m...@mtcc.com ]( 
mailto:m...@mtcc.com )> wrote:


 
On 7/13/20 8:16 PM, Greg Skinner via NANOG wrote:If you ever decide to revisit 
this subject, I recall it was covered here in [ this thread started by Bill 
Herrin ]( https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2012-July/149687.html ).
My general feelings on the subject of tech interviews are summarized in the 
“interview anti-loop” section of [ this article by Steve Yegge ]( 
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html ).   
Although it is targeted to people seeking software engineering jobs at FANG 
(and FANG-like) companies, IMO the general tone is applicable to other tech 
careers, even network engineering.  I have seen numerous articles (and 
subsequent discussions) on this subject on forums such as Quora, Medium, and 
Hacker News.
 
That blog post is everything that is wrong with software interviews. It's fine 
to ask intricate algorithm questions for somebody fresh out of school because 
what else are you going to ask them? But for somebody who's years out of school 
and has lots of experience, the intricate details of various algorithms fade 
especially ones that you don't use very often, or are embedded in library 
routines you'd be fired for if you tried to reinvent them. Telling people they 
have to go back to school for stuff they won't be using on the job is 
offensive.I once failed a network engineering interview because I couldn’t 
recite the OSPF LSA types by number from memory. It was fine, the fact that was 
a key question in the interview convinced me that I had no more desire to work 
there than they had to hire me.



My personal method is to devise a problem and actually work with them... 
because that's what I (or others) are going to be doing. How well can they get 
the requirements? How do they zero in on how to solve it? You can take this as 
deep or shallow as you like. Often I'd give it as a homework assignment if I 
liked them.I prefer this approach as well. Depending on the level of 
interviewee, I like to pull up a real world scenario from my past and see how 
they approach it. I’m not nearly as concerned if they get to the right solution 
as I want to see how they go about identifying and solving the problem. Do they 
ask questions that narrow their focus and identify the issue, or do they start 
trying random things hoping to stumble across a solution without understanding 
the problem?
The former moves on to the next steps towards employment. The latter is dropped 
from consideration.



My personal theory is software interviewing is basically a hazing ritual where 
the interviewers are trying to fluff their own privates, and it's almost to a 
one male. I wrote this post a while ago:
[ http://rip-van-webble.blogspot.com/2013/07/interviews-as-hazing-rituals.html 
]( http://rip-van-webble.blogspot.com/2013/07/interviews-as-hazing-rituals.html 
)
MikeNot being a developer (at least not for the last 25+ years), I haven’t done 
many “software” interviews, but I’ve been through network and sysadmin 
interviews that ran the gamut. Frankly, the ones that seemed to be more about 
fluffing privates were the companies I put less focus on going forward. The 
interviewers that seemed to match my style and wanted to see me do real-world 
things like troubleshooting or solving design problems or identifying 
architectural flaws in a proposed solution usually resulted in mutual respect 
and I usually moved forward through the interview processes. On the few 
occasions where I got a job out of a fluffing interview, it almost universally 
turned out to be one I wished I hadn’t taken.
Owen

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas]

On 7/14/20 10:33 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
On Jul 14, 2020, at 10:20 , Michael Thomas > wrote:


I once failed a network engineering interview because I couldn’t 
recite the OSPF LSA types by number from memory. It was fine, the 
fact that was a key question in the interview convinced me that I had 
no more desire to work there than they had to hire me.


I once got rejected because I spaced out and didn't remember the java 
keyword "final" as a constant. you can't make this stuff up.



My personal method is to devise a problem and actually work with 
them... because that's what I (or others) are going to be doing. How 
well can they get the requirements? How do they zero in on how to 
solve it? You can take this as deep or shallow as you like. Often I'd 
give it as a homework assignment if I liked them.


I prefer this approach as well. Depending on the level of interviewee, 
I like to pull up a real world scenario from my past and see how they 
approach it. I’m not nearly as concerned if they get to the right 
solution as I want to see how they go about identifying and solving 
the problem. Do they ask questions that narrow their focus and 
identify the issue, or do they start trying random things hoping to 
stumble across a solution without understanding the problem?
I often use something that was somewhat topical to me but dumbed down 
enough to fit in an interview and possible homework assignment. My 
reasoning is that I'm not entirely sure what the solution ought to look 
like either, so I'm interested to see what their take is. I can also 
give them real time feedback just like I would if they were a co-worker. 
At base, an interview should answer the question: "can I work with this 
person?".


Not being a developer (at least not for the last 25+ years), I haven’t 
done many “software” interviews, but I’ve been through network and 
sysadmin interviews that ran the gamut. Frankly, the ones that seemed 
to be more about fluffing privates were the companies I put less focus 
on going forward. The interviewers that seemed to match my style and 
wanted to see me do real-world things like troubleshooting or solving 
design problems or identifying architectural flaws in a proposed 
solution usually resulted in mutual respect and I usually moved 
forward through the interview processes. On the few occasions where I 
got a job out of a fluffing interview, it almost universally turned 
out to be one I wished I hadn’t taken.


I had a screening interview at Google where the screener asked some 
ridiculous question that nobody not straight out of school would know, 
and even then not likely. I was like, wtf? If that's how they treat 
candidates -- and from everything I've heard it is -- I want nothing to 
do with them, and flat out refused their recruiters a dozen time 
afterward even though they pleaded that they've changed. Sorry, 
interviewing is a two-way street.


Mike

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas]

On 7/14/20 10:46 AM, Shawn L via NANOG wrote:


I completely agree.  One of the people I used to do interviews with 
would look through the resume, etc. and then say something like "this 
all looks good. Tell me about something you've done".  And we'd move 
on to talk about projects and how they tackled it, etc.


We didn't give tests, just questions like  "if we asked you to do 
this, on something you haven't seen or used before, how would you go 
about it".   Or pretend I'm the customer.  I want to do this.  How 
would you go about it?  it wasn't about getting a 'correct' answer, it 
was about how they went about solving the problem.




I do that too. I figure that if they can't teach me about something 
they've done in real life, they're probably overstating their 
involvement. People should *like* talking about how they went about 
solving problems and be proud of what they achieved. But I try as much 
as possible to put candidates at ease because I know that not everybody 
reacts to interviews the same, which is sadly not the case far too often.


Mike

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Ahmed elBorno]

15 years ago, I applied to a network admin role at Google, it was for their
corporate office, not even the production network.

I had less than two years experience.

The interviewer asked me:

1) What is the difference between flow balancing techniques on Cisco IOS
and Linux?
2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America and
Europe, how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a TCP size of
X?

I'll never forget this :)

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 10:50 AM Michael Thomas  wrote:

>
> On 7/14/20 10:33 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>
> On Jul 14, 2020, at 10:20 , Michael Thomas  wrote:
>
>
> I once failed a network engineering interview because I couldn’t recite
> the OSPF LSA types by number from memory. It was fine, the fact that was a
> key question in the interview convinced me that I had no more desire to
> work there than they had to hire me.
>
> I once got rejected because I spaced out and didn't remember the java
> keyword "final" as a constant. you can't make this stuff up.
>
>
> My personal method is to devise a problem and actually work with them...
> because that's what I (or others) are going to be doing. How well can they
> get the requirements? How do they zero in on how to solve it? You can take
> this as deep or shallow as you like. Often I'd give it as a homework
> assignment if I liked them.
>
> I prefer this approach as well. Depending on the level of interviewee, I
> like to pull up a real world scenario from my past and see how they
> approach it. I’m not nearly as concerned if they get to the right solution
> as I want to see how they go about identifying and solving the problem. Do
> they ask questions that narrow their focus and identify the issue, or do
> they start trying random things hoping to stumble across a solution without
> understanding the problem?
>
> I often use something that was somewhat topical to me but dumbed down
> enough to fit in an interview and possible homework assignment. My
> reasoning is that I'm not entirely sure what the solution ought to look
> like either, so I'm interested to see what their take is. I can also give
> them real time feedback just like I would if they were a co-worker. At
> base, an interview should answer the question: "can I work with this
> person?".
>
> Not being a developer (at least not for the last 25+ years), I haven’t
> done many “software” interviews, but I’ve been through network and sysadmin
> interviews that ran the gamut. Frankly, the ones that seemed to be more
> about fluffing privates were the companies I put less focus on going
> forward. The interviewers that seemed to match my style and wanted to see
> me do real-world things like troubleshooting or solving design problems or
> identifying architectural flaws in a proposed solution usually resulted in
> mutual respect and I usually moved forward through the interview processes.
> On the few occasions where I got a job out of a fluffing interview, it
> almost universally turned out to be one I wished I hadn’t taken.
>
> I had a screening interview at Google where the screener asked some
> ridiculous question that nobody not straight out of school would know, and
> even then not likely. I was like, wtf? If that's how they treat candidates
> -- and from everything I've heard it is -- I want nothing to do with them,
> and flat out refused their recruiters a dozen time afterward even though
> they pleaded that they've changed. Sorry, interviewing is a two-way street.
>
> Mike
>

Looking for an admin at Solarwinds MSP/Mail Assure

[Mark Spring]

Does anybody have a contact at Solarwinds MSP where I could troubleshoot
some issues with receiving messages from their Mail Assure platform?

We have several users/domains that cannot receive messages from them and I
don't see any connections from their servers at the TCP level that I can
troubleshoot. It seems like they are holding onto old records but the
admins that hold the service contract have not been able to produce any
kind of logs from their support. When they send a message they get 5.0.0
response, but the same thing happened when they typ-o'd the domain which
tells me it's a bad lookup on their server. I'm happy to work with anybody
at solarwinds MSP or anybody else that might be able to shed some light on
this. My users are just having issues receiving the message from solarwinds
customers but I'm happy to put any amount of my resources into getting this
resolved.

Mark Spring
Information Systems Manager

-- 
NKTelco
301 W. South St.New Knoxville, OH 45871


Phone: 1-888-NKTELCO
Fax: 
419-753-2950
This message and the file(s) attached are confidential and 
proprietary
information of NKTelco for the sole use of the intended 
recipient. Any 
unauthorized review, distribution, disclosure, copying, 
use, or 
dissemination, either whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Do 
not 
transmit these documents, in any form, to any third party without the 

expressed written permission of NKTelco.

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Peter Kristolaitis]

On 2020-07-14 1:55 p.m., Michael Thomas wrote:
But I try as much as possible to put candidates at ease because I know 
that not everybody reacts to interviews the same, which is sadly not 
the case far too often.


Mike

I often ask a question early in the interview to the effect of "Tell me 
about a tech project you've worked on outside of your professional 
work.  It doesn't have to be related at all to this role or any other 
professional role you've worked on, just something cool involving tech 
that you've done on your own time."


I don't care if the answer is setting up a complicated home lab, or 
programming Arduinos to make a robotic cat feeder, or 3D printing, or 
whatever.   I ask this question for two reasons: first, there is a 
correlation between being passionate about technology and being good at 
working with it and learning it professionally;  and second, talking 
about not-directly-related-to-the-resume stuff for a couple of minutes 
often lets the "introvert geek" personality-types relax and open up a 
lot.  I find this is particularly helpful when hiring for junior and 
intermediate roles, but I will sometimes ask it of senior candidates too.

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas]

On 7/14/20 11:19 AM, Peter Kristolaitis wrote:

On 2020-07-14 1:55 p.m., Michael Thomas wrote:
But I try as much as possible to put candidates at ease because I 
know that not everybody reacts to interviews the same, which is sadly 
not the case far too often.


Mike

I often ask a question early in the interview to the effect of "Tell 
me about a tech project you've worked on outside of your professional 
work.  It doesn't have to be related at all to this role or any other 
professional role you've worked on, just something cool involving tech 
that you've done on your own time."


I don't care if the answer is setting up a complicated home lab, or 
programming Arduinos to make a robotic cat feeder, or 3D printing, or 
whatever.   I ask this question for two reasons: first, there is a 
correlation between being passionate about technology and being good 
at working with it and learning it professionally;  and second, 
talking about not-directly-related-to-the-resume stuff for a couple of 
minutes often lets the "introvert geek" personality-types relax and 
open up a lot.  I find this is particularly helpful when hiring for 
junior and intermediate roles, but I will sometimes ask it of senior 
candidates too.




Oh, I like that one too and ask it often. It's sort of depressing how 
often the answer is "i don't have time" or something to that effect.


I wrote a LIGO listener to monitor the cosmic kabooms as they were 
detected just for fun and to learn Django. You have to be constantly 
refreshing your skills and that habit is way more important than whether 
you can code up algorithm XYZ or tell me how TCP slow start works.


Mike

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[William Herrin]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:12 PM Mehmet Akcin  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.

And the best parts:

With the choices they make, they'll tell you exactly how deep their
knowledge goes. So it works for all tech hires, junior to senior,
sysadmin, developer, network engineer, whatever.

It's an oral question, you don't have to write or draw anything to
answer, so you can use it in a phone screen.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


--
William Herrin
b...@herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas]

On 7/14/20 12:09 PM, William Herrin wrote:

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:12 PM Mehmet Akcin  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.


Mike, i failed that interview i guess

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 12:17 PM Michael Thomas  wrote:
> On 7/14/20 12:09 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:12 PM Mehmet Akcin  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.

-Bill



-- 
William Herrin
b...@herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 10:59 AM Ahmed elBorno  wrote:
>
> 15 years ago, I applied to a network admin role at Google, it was for their 
> corporate office, not even the production network.
>
> I had less than two years experience.
>
> The interviewer asked me:
>
> 1) What is the difference between flow balancing techniques on Cisco IOS and 
> Linux?
> 2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America and Europe, 
> how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a TCP size of X?

Hi Ahmed,

Those are terrible questions. I've been in the business for a quarter
century, a Linux and Cisco IOS user for most of that and I don't, off
hand, know the answer to #1. As for number #2, it's highly variable
depending on when you lose the first packet, ending fast window
growth. And you will. On a gigabyte transfer over any real-world
network, you will lose some packets both to congestion and bit errors.
And that's before you consider the long-fat-pipe problem. Trying to
treat it like a math train problem is bizarre.

My Google interviewers asked much better questions, along the lines of
"build me this" or "debug this problem." Even then they fell in to one
of the traps with that methodology: on the "debug this problem"
question, the interviewer wasn't familiar with one of the diagnostic
commands I went to, so he guessed at what the output would be. His
guess was just enough wrong to eliminate the cause he wanted me to
find. The command should have hung accessing a faulty NFS mount but in
his version of the story it didn't.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin
b...@herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/

RE: questions asked during network engineer interview

[adamv0025]

This is exactly why the espresso network looks like it does… 

Have you seen the advert for network architect position at google? Bunch of 
programming languages and that’s enough apparently.

adam

 

From: NANOG  On Behalf Of 
Ahmed elBorno
Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2020 6:57 PM
To: Michael Thomas 
Cc: NANOG list 
Subject: Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

 

15 years ago, I applied to a network admin role at Google, it was for their 
corporate office, not even the production network.

 

I had less than two years experience.

 

The interviewer asked me:

 

1) What is the difference between flow balancing techniques on Cisco IOS and 
Linux?

2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America and Europe, 
how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a TCP size of X?

 

I'll never forget this :)

 

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 10:50 AM Michael Thomas mailto:m...@mtcc.com> > wrote:

 

On 7/14/20 10:33 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:

On Jul 14, 2020, at 10:20 , Michael Thomas mailto:m...@mtcc.com> > wrote:





I once failed a network engineering interview because I couldn’t recite the 
OSPF LSA types by number from memory. It was fine, the fact that was a key 
question in the interview convinced me that I had no more desire to work there 
than they had to hire me.

I once got rejected because I spaced out and didn't remember the java keyword 
"final" as a constant. you can't make this stuff up.

 

My personal method is to devise a problem and actually work with them... 
because that's what I (or others) are going to be doing. How well can they get 
the requirements? How do they zero in on how to solve it? You can take this as 
deep or shallow as you like. Often I'd give it as a homework assignment if I 
liked them.

I prefer this approach as well. Depending on the level of interviewee, I like 
to pull up a real world scenario from my past and see how they approach it. I’m 
not nearly as concerned if they get to the right solution as I want to see how 
they go about identifying and solving the problem. Do they ask questions that 
narrow their focus and identify the issue, or do they start trying random 
things hoping to stumble across a solution without understanding the problem?

I often use something that was somewhat topical to me but dumbed down enough to 
fit in an interview and possible homework assignment. My reasoning is that I'm 
not entirely sure what the solution ought to look like either, so I'm 
interested to see what their take is. I can also give them real time feedback 
just like I would if they were a co-worker. At base, an interview should answer 
the question: "can I work with this person?". 




Not being a developer (at least not for the last 25+ years), I haven’t done 
many “software” interviews, but I’ve been through network and sysadmin 
interviews that ran the gamut. Frankly, the ones that seemed to be more about 
fluffing privates were the companies I put less focus on going forward. The 
interviewers that seemed to match my style and wanted to see me do real-world 
things like troubleshooting or solving design problems or identifying 
architectural flaws in a proposed solution usually resulted in mutual respect 
and I usually moved forward through the interview processes. On the few 
occasions where I got a job out of a fluffing interview, it almost universally 
turned out to be one I wished I hadn’t taken.

I had a screening interview at Google where the screener asked some ridiculous 
question that nobody not straight out of school would know, and even then not 
likely. I was like, wtf? If that's how they treat candidates -- and from 
everything I've heard it is -- I want nothing to do with them, and flat out 
refused their recruiters a dozen time afterward even though they pleaded that 
they've changed. Sorry, interviewing is a two-way street.

Mike

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[William Herrin]

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:12 PM Mehmet Akcin  wrote:
> 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.

I'm also a fan of Amazon's STAR approach: Situation, Task, Activity,
Result. They didn't invent it but they're really good at it. STAR is
where you ask the candidate to tell you about some situation they
encountered in their work, what they did, and how it turned out
(including what they learned and would do differently). It's open
ended and bias-neutral. Which is a big deal.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin
b...@herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas]

On 7/14/20 12:32 PM, William Herrin wrote:

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 12:17 PM Michael Thomas  wrote:

On 7/14/20 12:09 PM, William Herrin wrote:

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:12 PM Mehmet Akcin  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.

Heh. Ok, it has some heuristic which looks for things that appear to be 
a url, or a fragment of a url and if it looks like it's a URL will make 
a canonical representation of url. it's an interesting question whether 
it chooses http or https or both in a happy-eyeballs kind of way and i 
don't know the answer to that. for search, i creates a canonical url to 
google which obeys its query engine's API/parameters.


In both cases, a library routine will be called which knows how to do a 
HTTP(S) GET method which will in turn queries DNS for the host part of 
the url which may use port 53/UPD or the new fangled DoH which I'm 
uncertain whether it runs on plain old 80/443 or something new. Once the 
IP address is fetched, it might literally do Happy Eyeballs to determine 
whether the host is reachable by IPv6 (assuming there was a  record 
for the host), which of course involves connecting a TCP (or now 
QUIC/UDP) socket and performing the three-way handshake to initiate a 
connection, or whatever the QUIC equivalent is since they are trying to 
jam all of the TCP and TLS handshakes into as few exchanges as possible. 
In both cases, a TLS is spun up doing PFS(? I know IPsec does), 
cert-exchange from the server to the client but extremely rarely client 
to server where signatures are created and verified.


I could keep going down the stack but I'll warn you ahead of time that I 
get dodgy at the PHY layer and fancy MAC stuff -- I'm not actually a 
network engineer, so things like VLAN's and 802.1x don't roll off my 
tongue, so you can probably stop this interview now :)


Mike

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Matthew Petach]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 11:00 Ahmed elBorno  wrote:

> 15 years ago, I applied to a network admin role at Google, it was for
> their corporate office, not even the production network.
>
> I had less than two years experience.
>
> The interviewer asked me:
> [...]
> 2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America and
> Europe, how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a TCP size of
> X?
>


I *love* questions like that, because I can immediately respond back with
"well, that depends; did your sysadmin configure rfc1323 extension support
in your TCP stack?  Is SACK enabled?  What about window scaling?  Does your
OS do dynamic buffer tuning for TCP, or are the values locked in at start
time?"

Depending on how the interviewer responds gives me a pretty good idea how
much clue the people I'd be working with have, and how well they work
collaboratively even with people they don't really know.  If they respond
well on their feet, and give me better inputs, I respond with a better
answer.

If they say "It doesn't matter", then I respond by saying "See, that's why
things aren't working so well for you here; you don't really understand how
far down the rabbit hole goes", and respectfully ask to end the interview
before we waste any more of each other's time.

I *love* teaching--but only with people who are open to learning.

Stay safe!

Matt



>

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Scott Weeks]

--- mpet...@netflight.com wrote:
From: Matthew Petach 
On Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 11:00 Ahmed elBorno  wrote:

> I had less than two years experience.
>
> The interviewer asked me:
> [...]
> 2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America and
> Europe, how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a TCP size of
> X?
>


I *love* questions like that, because I can immediately respond back with
"well, that depends; did your sysadmin configure rfc1323 extension support
in your TCP stack?  Is SACK enabled?  What about window scaling?  Does your
OS do dynamic buffer tuning for TCP, or are the values locked in at start
time?"




I'm not so sure someone with only 2 years experience would know that.

scott

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Miles Fidelman]

More systems engineer than network engineer - though most of the systems 
I've worked on have been things like network management, and large, 
distributed, networked systems.


Anyway...

I generally ask people:

1. Tell me about yourself:  A good way to find out how someone thinks 
about themself, what interests them, their career path, etc.  (Or it 
tells me that they haven't been paying attention and/or can't present 
themself very well).


2. Tell me a bit more about , or, 
about a piece of work that you're particularly proud of:  Let them tell 
me about something that's significant to them, in depth - ask questions 
that dig into design details, hard challenges, and how they approached & 
solved them.  Maybe get a demo, ask for an architectural overview, then 
deep dive into something interesting.  Maybe also ask them about their 
last all-nighter.


3.  Tell me about how you'd approach getting up to speed and getting 
started on your first project here:  First off, it tells me if they've 
done their homework.  Then, what questions they ask me are rather 
telling.  And then maybe we can get into some white board noodling.  
Ultimately, my main criterion for hiring is if they either poke a hole 
in what we've been doing (AND suggest a solution), or come up with a 
good approach to something that we haven't thought of already.


On the receiving end:

- I make a point of doing my homework about the company, the people I'll 
be interviewing with, the position, and the project. Kind of the way I'd 
approach a consulting gig.


- 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).


Miles Fidelman

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

RE: questions asked during network engineer interview

[adamv0025]

> William Herrin
> Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2020 8:32 PM
> 
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 12:17 PM Michael Thomas  wrote:
> > On 7/14/20 12:09 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:12 PM Mehmet Akcin 
> 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
 

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas]

On 7/14/20 1:14 PM, Matthew Petach wrote:



On Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 11:00 Ahmed elBorno > wrote:


15 years ago, I applied to a network admin role at Google, it was
for their corporate office, not even the production network.

I had less than two years experience.

The interviewer asked me:
[...]
2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America
and Europe, how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a
TCP size of X?



I *love* questions like that, because I can immediately respond back 
with "well, that depends; did your sysadmin configure rfc1323 
extension support in your TCP stack?  Is SACK enabled?  What about 
window scaling?  Does your OS do dynamic buffer tuning for TCP, or are 
the values locked in at start time?"


Depending on how the interviewer responds gives me a pretty good idea 
how much clue the people I'd be working with have, and how well they 
work collaboratively even with people they don't really know.  If they 
respond well on their feet, and give me better inputs, I respond with 
a better answer.


If they say "It doesn't matter", then I respond by saying "See, that's 
why things aren't working so well for you here; you don't really 
understand how far down the rabbit hole goes", and respectfully ask to 
end the interview before we waste any more of each other's time.


This is the generic problem with interviewing is that people seem to 
believe they are born with a god given innate ability to interview 
people. They ask a generic question, and are surprised and often 
offended that they get an "it depends" and "please clarify XYZ". 
Interviewing is *hard* and doing a semblance of a good interview for a 
candidate is time consuming, so most people just punt with stupid 
unthoughtful questions where they think that all of the requirements are 
perfectly clear. Your answer *should* impress them, but I doubt that's 
the case in general.


Mike

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas]

On 7/14/20 1:23 PM, Scott Weeks wrote:


--- mpet...@netflight.com wrote:
From: Matthew Petach 
On Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 11:00 Ahmed elBorno  wrote:


I had less than two years experience.

The interviewer asked me:
[...]
2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America and
Europe, how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a TCP size of
X?



I *love* questions like that, because I can immediately respond back with
"well, that depends; did your sysadmin configure rfc1323 extension support
in your TCP stack?  Is SACK enabled?  What about window scaling?  Does your
OS do dynamic buffer tuning for TCP, or are the values locked in at start
time?"




I'm not so sure someone with only 2 years experience would know that.


On the other hand, it might not be bad ask as a "what would you do if 
somebody asked you this question, what would you do research how to 
answer the question?" because this is definitely something that an 
unknowledgeable person up the management chain might ask.


Mike

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 1:26 PM  wrote:
> > William Herrin
> > Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2020 8:32 PM
> >
> > On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 12:17 PM Michael Thomas  wrote:
> > > On 7/14/20 12:09 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Jul 13, 2020 at 3:12 PM Mehmet Akcin 
> > 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.

> 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...).


You know what job you're interviewing for. What you choose to talk
about tells me volumes about how you think.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin
b...@herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas]

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

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Miles Fidelman]

On 7/14/20 4:14 PM, Matthew Petach wrote:




On Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 11:00 Ahmed elBorno > wrote:


15 years ago, I applied to a network admin role at Google, it was
for their corporate office, not even the production network.

I had less than two years experience.

The interviewer asked me:
[...]
2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America
and Europe, how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a
TCP size of X


Well, the first question is the available end-to-end bandwidth. Pretty 
much everything else is irrelevant.


Of course, I might ask them what they mean by "size."

Miles Fidelman

--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Mehmet Akcin]

Should I do another session let’s say tomorrow and y’all join live and
share your thoughts? ;-)

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 14:24 Miles Fidelman 
wrote:

> On 7/14/20 4:14 PM, Matthew Petach wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 11:00 Ahmed elBorno  wrote:
>
>> 15 years ago, I applied to a network admin role at Google, it was for
>> their corporate office, not even the production network.
>>
>> I had less than two years experience.
>>
>> The interviewer asked me:
>> [...]
>> 2) If we had a 1GB file that we need to transfer between America and
>> Europe, how much time do we need, knowing that we start with a TCP size of X
>>
>
> Well, the first question is the available end-to-end bandwidth.  Pretty
> much everything else is irrelevant.
>
> Of course, I might ask them what they mean by "size."
>
> Miles Fidelman
>
> --
> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
> In practice, there is.   Yogi Berra
>
> Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
> Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
> In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
> nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown
>
> --
Mehmet
+1-424-298-1903

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Andrey Khomyakov]

I was once asked at a FANG interview how I would affect incoming traffic using 
BGP. I listed the usual offenders like AS path and med. He kept asking how 
else, to which after pondering I said that I cant think of other ways right 
now. He was insisting I find one, so I theorized on using more specific prefix 
even though that’s technically not a BGP method. I think that was when he 
decided I failed, and I decided that he wanted me to name a creative method he 
himself used at his megascaler. Considering I never had to even think about 
solving problems at their scale I think that was just dumb to insist I come up 
with it. 
I’ll never know what that magical method is since he didn’t actually give me 
the answer I didn’t know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 
In my mind I’d rather a person admit to not knowing than spit bull at you with 
confidence. Admitting not knowing means you’ll know to look it up or ask 
someone. Bullsh*tting means you’ll probably implement some insane thing and not 
consult anyone about it.

The interview in general seemed to be more about technical nerd knobs of random 
technologies and less about how I think about problems. 

My take is that nerd knobs can be taught and/or looked up. How a person thinks 
and dissects the problems at hand can hardly be changed easily.

The question about “what happens when you enter google.com into your browser” 
is probably my favorite and I ask it to candidates every time. That and “how 
can you confirm a remote system is listening on a given TCP port”. Idk what it 
is that confuses people, but close to zero people answered “telnet or netcat to 
that port” and most of them went down the “I ssh into the system” or “I look in 
the firewall” or “I netstat”.

Another one is “what is the summary prefix for 10.0.0.0/24 and 10.0.1.0/24”. 
So.many.minds.blown! Some ask for pen and paper. Others just start doing binary 
conversions out loud

Turns out there are as many bad candidates as there are interviewers. I 
consider myself a bad interviewer so I try to shy away from interviewing 
candidates if I can. And based on this email chains so far it seems like there 
is not an agreed upon good interview method.

---
Sent from mobile

> On Jul 14, 2020, at 10:34, Owen DeLong  wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>>> On Jul 14, 2020, at 10:20 , Michael Thomas  wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 7/13/20 8:16 PM, Greg Skinner via NANOG wrote:
 If you ever decide to revisit this subject, I recall it was covered here 
 in this thread started by Bill Herrin.
 
 My general feelings on the subject of tech interviews are summarized in 
 the “interview anti-loop” section of this article by Steve Yegge.   
 Although it is targeted to people seeking software engineering jobs at 
 FANG (and FANG-like) companies, IMO the general tone is applicable to 
 other tech careers, even network engineering.  I have seen numerous 
 articles (and subsequent discussions) on this subject on forums such as 
 Quora, Medium, and Hacker News.
>>> 
>>> That blog post is everything that is wrong with software interviews. It's 
>>> fine to ask intricate algorithm questions for somebody fresh out of school 
>>> because what else are you going to ask them? But for somebody who's years 
>>> out of school and has lots of experience, the intricate details of various 
>>> algorithms fade especially ones that you don't use very often, or are 
>>> embedded in library routines you'd be fired for if you tried to reinvent 
>>> them. Telling people they have to go back to school for stuff they won't be 
>>> using on the job is offensive.
>>> 
>> 
>> I once failed a network engineering interview because I couldn’t recite the 
>> OSPF LSA types by number from memory. It was fine, the fact that was a key 
>> question in the interview convinced me that I had no more desire to work 
>> there than they had to hire me.
>> My personal method is to devise a problem and actually work with them... 
>> because that's what I (or others) are going to be doing. How well can they 
>> get the requirements? How do they zero in on how to solve it? You can take 
>> this as deep or shallow as you like. Often I'd give it as a homework 
>> assignment if I liked them.
>> 
> I prefer this approach as well. Depending on the level of interviewee, I like 
> to pull up a real world scenario from my past and see how they approach it. 
> I’m not nearly as concerned if they get to the right solution as I want to 
> see how they go about identifying and solving the problem. Do they ask 
> questions that narrow their focus and identify the issue, or do they start 
> trying random things hoping to stumble across a solution without 
> understanding the problem?
> 
> The former moves on to the next steps towards employment. The latter is 
> dropped from consideration.
>> My personal theory is software interviewing is basically a hazing ritual 
>> where the interviewers are trying to fluff their own privates, and it's 
>> almost to a one

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Here At InfoChambers]

On 7/14/20 10:49 AM, Michael Thomas wrote:



I had a screening interview at Google where the screener asked some 
ridiculous question that nobody not straight out of school would know, 
and even then not likely. I was like, wtf? If that's how they treat 
candidates -- and from everything I've heard it is -- I want nothing to 
do with them, and flat out refused their recruiters a dozen time 
afterward even though they pleaded that they've changed. Sorry, 
interviewing is a two-way street.


   I had a job where my department was very suddenly informed that 
rather than continuing with the quite successful training and 
introduction program that we had for our new people, instead A Trainer 
was required.


   After some bit we wound up with someone who definitely did not train 
people. Instead he spent his time making narcissistic videos, which were 
declared to be mandatory viewing for all in the department, and were 
totally useless for the work we were doing.


   In time, everyone actually getting the work done either ran for the 
door or finally got fired in waves.


   Somewhat in parallel, LinkedIn has been sending me begging emails 
demanding that I pay attention to it.  When I've logged in, I've been 
given displays based on where I've worked.


   One of the displays that pops up is a statement that the utter flake 
of a non-trainer now has a job which claims that he does "educational 
development", or something like that . . . .  at Google.


Sol

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Joe Hamelin]

My first question was always: Who was Jon Postel?
--
Joe Hamelin, W7COM, Tulalip, WA, +1 (360) 474-7474




>
>

Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Sabri Berisha]

- On Jul 14, 2020, at 1:14 PM, Matthew Petach  
wrote: 

Hi,

> Depending on how the interviewer responds gives me a pretty good idea how much
> clue the people I'd be working with have, and how well they work
> collaboratively even with people they don't really know. If they respond well
> on their feet, and give me better inputs, I respond with a better answer.

This is exactly what I would be looking for when I interview. Make me regret
asking the question, and you'll have my vote. I like to work with people that 
are smarter than me.

But I also prefer generic questions that are open to the candidate's 
imagination.
Not so much to make their lives difficult, but to see how they think. For 
example,
I'll draw a small network topology and ask which protocol they prefer (most of 
the
time that's either OSPF or BGP). "Ok, fully configured network, after a power 
outage the power is back on. Tell me what happens and how routes are exchanged".

OSPF areas? EBGP or IBGP? You make it up, whatever you're comfortable with. If 
they
start explaining how R1 starts transmitting hello packets, you know that they 
think
different from someone that starts to explain how R3 and R4 are ABRs. But 
whatever
answer I get, I dig until I get an "I don't know". Like "ok, what information is
contained in that hello packet?". Etc, etc. But I expect nobody to know 
everything,
especially not stuff that can be easily googled.

I've been on both sides many times, and like other commenters say, an interview
goes both ways. 

Thanks,

Sabri