April 20, 2009 at 8:27 am
Nicholas Cain (4/20/2009)
The question is more about how you handle a pressure situation than the actual details. If you can handle that being thrown at you in an interview and not get all flustered then it's a good start and it will give the interviewer a good impression.
I've had to reach inside someone's arm, where a broken bone had pierced the muscle and skin, and pinch a bleeding artery shut with my fingers, while I fashioned a tourniquette out of shoelaces with my left hand. Trust me, once you've done that kind of thing successfully, anything you run into as a DBA will seem pretty tame by comparison.
(On the other hand, I don't recommend going around and putting people into a situation where they need that kind of handling, just so you can practice. But I do recommend periodically crashing a server so you can practice handling that.)
Honestly, if you want to learn how to handle pressure way beyond anything you'll encounter in the workaday world, here are some options: join the military for a few years of active duty service, join the National Guard, become a volunteer fireman, volunteer in disaster areas, raise some kids, or work in a day care. Those are pretty much in descending order. Any of them will either break you or teach you to deal with stressful situations. Master any of them, and DBAing will seem tranquil and serene, even when the halon alarm is going off, in an earthquake, during a thunderstorm, when the power is out.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
April 20, 2009 at 8:28 am
Nicholas Cain (4/20/2009)
The question is more about how you handle a pressure situation than the actual details. If you can handle that being thrown at you in an interview and not get all flustered then it's a good start and it will give the interviewer a good impression.
And the giant BOOM as the halon kicks in
April 20, 2009 at 8:30 am
Never had either of those happen, and hope it never does. I have dealt with power losses to the entire data center, and that's enough of a crisis for me.
April 20, 2009 at 8:33 am
GSquared(4/20/2009)
Honestly, if you want to learn how to handle pressure way beyond anything you'll encounter in the workaday world, here are some options: join the military for a few years of active duty service, join the National Guard, become a volunteer fireman, volunteer in disaster areas, raise some kids, or work in a day care. Those are pretty much in descending order. Any of them will either break you or teach you to deal with stressful situations. Master any of them, and DBAing will seem tranquil and serene, even when the halon alarm is going off, in an earthquake, during a thunderstorm, when the power is out.- GSquared
Not to mention every persons respect.
April 20, 2009 at 8:34 am
GilaMonster (4/20/2009)
GSquared (4/20/2009)
"the server room has smoke coming out of it and the halon alarm just went off to warn people to get out of there"Now that's one I haven't had yet. I've seen smoke pouring out of the generator room, but never the server room. Yet.
I haven't quite had that either. I have had a computer catch on fire under my desk, though.
Some idiot in building maintenance crossed a couple of high voltage lines and blew every circuit breaker in the building. The lights went out on most floors, but in the basement (where both the power lines and my office were), some of the lights exploded, surge protectors burst into (small) flames, my laser printer spat blue sparks, my computer caught fire, and CRT monitors also spat sparks and smoke. Nothing huge in terms of fires, just enough to grab extinguishers and start blasting powder at stuff. And then clean up the broken glass from the lights. Did cause about $100k in damage to computer equipment and copiers and such. Fun times! (If anyone hasn't already reached this conclusion, the guy who caused this was fired.)
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
April 20, 2009 at 8:37 am
That's on a par with a guy testing the sprinkler system who found out that his partner hadn't shut down the flow to that head....many thousands of gallons of water and one hurt testing guy
April 20, 2009 at 9:02 am
The generator problem was a series of small problems.
This was a bank of large generators that were designed to supply power to 6 office blocks (one of which was a 32 floors high) in the even of a power failure. During the previous generator test one of them had failed and had been taken offline and was scheduled to be fixed that weekend. When we had an unexpected power failure, the rest of the generators kicked in but couldn't handle the demand.
Add to that a burst water pipe (carrying water to cool the generators), and you can see where the smoke came from.
Fortunately the generators shut down in response to the overload and the fire was easily contained.
Net result, entire 6 buildings without any power until City Power fixed the problem, 4 hours later. Servers all shut down after 1 hour as the UPSs flattened.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
April 20, 2009 at 9:37 am
Carolyn Richardson (4/20/2009)
It's 3pm on a Friday, your production OLTP environment is down, every hour down costs the company one million dollars. People are phoning constantly, folks are rushing the hallways, running into your work area and freaking out wanting to know what you are doing, and why it's not fixed yet.
What do you do?
If I'm ever given such a open question as this I like to give myself a bit of thinking time by throwing questions back at the interviewer asking what would I know at the time this happened things like, has a change recently be put in, who has assess to this system get some hints are the developers in this place allowed access to production systems. What can I see in the logs. Has this happened before, is it a regular occurance. It shows I'm thinking rationally about a problem but ensuring I can think about the issue properly. Also gets you some idea of what to expect if you get offered the job.
i dont think asking questions back would be a good idea with a question like this would it?
in my opinion, and its just my opinion, this would show that the person doesn't quite understand the point of the question.
its to see waht your problem solving skills are like. so by all means say as part of your answer ' i would ask questions like.....' but i wouldn't direct the questions directly at the interviewer.
first thing i suppose you would say though is that you would make everyone affected aware of what was going on. perhaps firing off an email to everyone in the company explaining the situation and that another email will be sent when its up.
April 20, 2009 at 9:57 am
davidandrews13 (4/20/2009)
Carolyn Richardson (4/20/2009)
It's 3pm on a Friday, your production OLTP environment is down, every hour down costs the company one million dollars. People are phoning constantly, folks are rushing the hallways, running into your work area and freaking out wanting to know what you are doing, and why it's not fixed yet.
What do you do?
If I'm ever given such a open question as this I like to give myself a bit of thinking time by throwing questions back at the interviewer asking what would I know at the time this happened things like, has a change recently be put in, who has assess to this system get some hints are the developers in this place allowed access to production systems. What can I see in the logs. Has this happened before, is it a regular occurance. It shows I'm thinking rationally about a problem but ensuring I can think about the issue properly. Also gets you some idea of what to expect if you get offered the job.
i dont think asking questions back would be a good idea with a question like this would it?
in my opinion, and its just my opinion, this would show that the person doesn't quite understand the point of the question.
its to see waht your problem solving skills are like. so by all means say as part of your answer ' i would ask questions like.....' but i wouldn't direct the questions directly at the interviewer.
first thing i suppose you would say though is that you would make everyone affected aware of what was going on. perhaps firing off an email to everyone in the company explaining the situation and that another email will be sent when its up.
I think Carolyn's questions would be appropriate to an interview.
They ask you what you would do if a server were down. You ask them what information and tools you'll have in that situation. That's a legitimate response, and perhaps even an important part of the two-way nature of an interview.
Let's say your response is, "I would remote desktop into the server and ..." and they interrupt with, "sorry, we can't allow you to do that, for security reasons". So you say, "okay, then I'll fire up Management Studio on my desktop machine and see if I can connect to the server...", and they interrupt again, with, "sorry, what I meant by not being able to remote desktop in, is that you'll be in the server room, using the monitor, keyboard and mouse right at the server, so you won't have a desktop machine, if you see what I mean". At that point, you might want to ask about whether they provide the Arctic survival gear for the job, or whether you're expected to do so on your own.
Asking what tools they standardly use, what information will be available to you for both routine and emergency handlings, what management policy is with regard to progress estimates/reports, are all going to be important.
You might want to ask about third party tools, too. Redgate makes some very nice DBA tools, for both administration and development, for example. Will you be allowed to use them? Will you be required to use them? Will they pay for them if you want to use them? Presence or absence of those tools might make a difference in how you respond to an emergency.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
April 20, 2009 at 10:02 am
I think asking questions to better define a situation is a great response. As the interviewer, if you start answering, I start thinking "assumptions" and wondering how off you could be.
Assessment is always the first step, and querying your people and systems as to what's going on is a great way to do this. Same in the interview. start to ask questions, show them that you can troubleshoot, but querying them instead of the server.
April 20, 2009 at 10:08 am
Steve Jones - Editor (4/20/2009)
I think asking questions to better define a situation is a great response. As the interviewer, if you start answering, I start thinking "assumptions" and wondering how off you could be.Assessment is always the first step, and querying your people and systems as to what's going on is a great way to do this. Same in the interview. start to ask questions, show them that you can troubleshoot, but querying them instead of the server.
Great response Steve.
I love it when people challenge the interviewer with questions, it really gives the sense of "you get it, and you want this".
April 20, 2009 at 10:15 am
Steve Jones - Editor (4/20/2009)
I think asking questions to better define a situation is a great response. As the interviewer, if you start answering, I start thinking "assumptions" and wondering how off you could be.Assessment is always the first step, and querying your people and systems as to what's going on is a great way to do this. Same in the interview. start to ask questions, show them that you can troubleshoot, but querying them instead of the server.
"Assumptions". That's one of the things interviewers may even ask "trick" questions to ferret out. In a book called something like "How do you move Mt Fuji?", there are descriptions of interviewing techniques at Microsoft that include that very point.
That book and, of course "What color is your parachute?", may help you prepare for interviews. Not because they provide an answer sheet, but because they get you into a proper mind-set.
April 20, 2009 at 11:50 am
I think being able to initiate a good 2 way conversation with an interviewer is key, they get an understanding of how you work and you get a heads up about what you can expect from the potential employer. I like being asked open questions it gives me an opening to ask questions in return, its better that just giving a standard yes/no response which just comes over as very dull, even if you always answer correctly.
April 20, 2009 at 3:35 pm
It's 3pm on a Friday, your production OLTP environment is down, every hour down costs the company one million dollars. People are phoning constantly, folks are rushing the hallways, running into your work area and freaking out wanting to know what you are doing, and why it's not fixed yet.
What do you do?
Maybe it's because I'm fairly new at this, or maybe it's the way I think. But I have to hope that my response would be something close to: "I would reach into my desk, pull out the Disaster Procedure Manual, and start with page one." To which the interviewer would undoubtedly reply, "Okay, let's assume there isn't a manual"
At this point you need to ask yourself, 'Do I really want to work with a company, as the person who this will be coming down on, which does not have a procedure in place for a very foreseeable problem that is capable of costing the company roughly $275 for every second it's down?'
If you decide that you do indeed want to be that person, I would at least suggest that you mention that as soon as the problem is over you will write such a procedure.
As far as interview questions, there are plenty that are, like the one above, not truly related to SQL Server, per se, and there are good books on those.
For the SQL interview questions, though, I would have thought that you did the right thing, posting here. I would assume that many of the people who constantly write about how they give interviews would be willing to throw a couple of questions your way, in order to help you prepare, as opposed to, well...
Memorising questions and answers is not going to help you pass an interview.
Please understand I have a great deal of respect for the time all of you volunteer, and have used your expertise in my own work on countless occasions, and am, therefore, extremely grateful to all of you.
April 20, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Wesley Norton (4/20/2009)
It's 3pm on a Friday, your production OLTP environment is down, every hour down costs the company one million dollars. People are phoning constantly, folks are rushing the hallways, running into your work area and freaking out wanting to know what you are doing, and why it's not fixed yet.
What do you do?
Maybe it's because I'm fairly new at this, or maybe it's the way I think. But I have to hope that my response would be something close to: "I would reach into my desk, pull out the Disaster Procedure Manual, and start with page one." To which the interviewer would undoubtedly reply, "Okay, let's assume there isn't a manual"
At this point you need to ask yourself, 'Do I really want to work with a company, as the person who this will be coming down on, which does not have a procedure in place for a very foreseeable problem that is capable of costing the company roughly $275 for every second it's down?'
If you decide that you do indeed want to be that person, I would at least suggest that you mention that as soon as the problem is over you will write such a procedure.
As far as interview questions, there are plenty that are, like the one above, not truly related to SQL Server, per se, and there are good books on those.
For the SQL interview questions, though, I would have thought that you did the right thing, posting here. I would assume that many of the people who constantly write about how they give interviews would be willing to throw a couple of questions your way, in order to help you prepare, as opposed to, well...
Memorising questions and answers is not going to help you pass an interview.
Please understand I have a great deal of respect for the time all of you volunteer, and have used your expertise in my own work on countless occasions, and am, therefore, extremely grateful to all of you.
Based on your answer, my reaction as an interviewer would be to say you're not qualified for the position.
For best practices on asking questions, please read the following article: Forum Etiquette: How to post data/code on a forum to get the best help[/url]
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