August 15, 2011 at 2:19 am
In 1983, I was applying for my first job and it was a salesman in a retail store. The district manager asked:
"In the last 5 years, approximately how much have you stolen from this company?"
That was his first question and it immediately set the tone for the rest of the interview.
August 15, 2011 at 12:57 pm
Jason- (8/12/2011)
What color is your brain?I said grey This was the question from the group VP. I had already nailed all the technical and soft skill questions, aced the written test (100%) and had the team and dept manager already assuming (and excited) I was their next hire. Didn't get the offer so Brains must not be grey.
Sounds an HR wienie got that from the latest psycho-babble book.
What Color Is Your Brain: A Fun and Fascinating Approach to Understanding Yourself and Others
by Sheila N Glazov
http://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your-Brain-Understanding/dp/1556428073
August 15, 2011 at 1:41 pm
Only question that ever threw me, "You come across as really arrogant. Have you ever made any friends?" I'm more used to coming across as hyperpedantic than arrogant.
Question I asked in an interview that threw the interviewer, "I'm a DBA. Why are you asking all these system and network admin questions?" After being grilled for several minutes on details of Active Directory, switch/router debugging, firewall/DMZ set up, and SAN configuration. The interviewer couldn't understand how I could possibly claim to be a DBA without knowing how to configure a DMZ for a web server, for example.
Assertion in an interview that threw me, "We have a lot of mission critical data, but it's okay to lose a day's worth of it because it would be too expensive to set up point-in-time restores, so we don't do log backups and just use Simple recovery."
All of these were in the same interview.
I got the offer. The pay and benefits offered were very, very good. I didn't take the job.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
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"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
August 15, 2011 at 2:16 pm
GSquared (8/15/2011)
...Assertion in an interview that threw me, "We have a lot of mission critical data, but it's okay to lose a day's worth of it because it would be too expensive to set up point-in-time restores, so we don't do log backups and just use Simple recovery."...
When I was interviewing someone, I explained that we usually do full daily backups and logs backups every 15 minutes, 24x7. He interrupted me to say that was all wrong, and that backup schedules should be based on user requirements.
I asked him if he thought that users usually have a good grasp of the technical implications of various methods of setting up backups. He said that it was their decision and that it was just too bad for them if they didn't.
August 15, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Michael Valentine Jones (8/15/2011)
GSquared (8/15/2011)
...Assertion in an interview that threw me, "We have a lot of mission critical data, but it's okay to lose a day's worth of it because it would be too expensive to set up point-in-time restores, so we don't do log backups and just use Simple recovery."...
When I was interviewing someone, I explained that we usually do full daily backups and logs backups every 15 minutes, 24x7. He interrupted me to say that was all wrong, and that backup schedules should be based on user requirements.
I asked him if he thought that users usually have a good grasp of the technical implications of various methods of setting up backups. He said that it was their decision and that it was just too bad for them if they didn't.
Well, it should be based on business needs, but not insofar as type and frequency. If the business says, "That data is important, but it really only changes once a quarter," it's up to the DBA to translate that into "no need for periodic log backups throughout the day, I'll just set up a full backup every quarter". So, I'd say he was someone who rotely memorized a "technical talking point", without understanding what it means.
But these guys were telling me they get hundreds of thousands of rows of new data per day, and that it's all mission critical, but storage space for log backups would be too expensive, so it was okay to lose it. Either data is "mission critical" and can't be lost (hence "critical"), or it's not and loss-prevention becomes subject to cost constraints. If you can't afford to back up data which is actually mission critical, then management (and business-owners/shareholders) need to know that the business could be shut down by a dead I/O subsystem without a millisecond of notice.
Of course, off-site replication, proper RAID arrays, redundant I/O channels, et al, can take the place of log backups in some cases, but that's not the point. They were telling me that it was okay to lose a day's worth of mission critical data. It just shows ignorance of what "mission critical" actually means. Nothing more, nothing less.
- 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
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