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...or could it have been WHAT you asked me... ...maybe it's WHEN you asked me... all i know is that YOU'RE ON FUCKIN' CRACK... |
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Sunday, March 14, 2004 |
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What do résumés and 'augmented' breasts have in common? | |
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Well, no one seems to mind the exaggeration of the truth from a distance, but we all know that substance is more important than appearance.
I've recently interviewed four different self-proclaimed senior UNIX engineers, and each of them had a list of credentials that was quite long and impressive at first glance. In fact, according to their CVs (a European curriculum vitae is analagous to a North American résumé) these guys were all bloody UNIX masters. So, what to do with UNIX masters? Well, you put the bitches up on the white-board and ask them to describe a network architecture within which they have managed their UNIX systems recently. You see, this catches them off guard - network isn't their strong point necessarily, but there's no such thing as just a UNIX engineer anymore so they know that they need to show some competence in networking if they want to have a chance. Ok, now that they've drawn some tore up network diagram that has probably never existed, ask them to explain the intricacies of a network based UNIX-standard, such as DNS. You'd be totally friggin mystified to see how many wankers describe themselves as "DNS" (not BIND specifically, just "DNS" for some reason) wizards, but are totally incapable of describing a simple DNS transaction from a network perspective. Anyhow, this always seems to break their confidence right from the start of the interview - which is something I've seen that I have to do in order to make it clear that they'd better be careful if they intend to try to bullshit their way into the job. So the other day I'm interviewing this fruitcake that my boss tells me (after a pre-interview) is an OG UNIX jedi from back in the day, and has a snake technique that you just gotta see to believe. His CV has the usual shit - he lists 50 acronyms and says he's an expert in each - so nothing extraordinary. The interview begins with me introducing myself and my co-interviewer along with a description of our roles within the company, and a very quick overview of the skills which we seek for the fullfillment of the position in question. This dood ends up being an old school BSD guy, so immediately I warm up to him since it's rare that I meet a BSDer in the EU; however he says a few things that just don't quite click, which leads me to ask the question "so, you must track FreeBSD-CURRENT I suspect" to which he replies, "oh yeah, I always use the current release because of all the security holes in older releases." I'm no BSD master myself, but I do expect people who say they've been a FreeBSD user for 5+ years to know wtf I mean when I say FreeBSD-CURRENT. So yeah, this guy basically bullshitted his way through the interview - even when we made it quite apparent that we have specific expertise in certain areas he had the audacity to bullshit even in those areas. In return for wasting my time I gave him a big smile at the end of the interview, said that I really hope to see him again after an offer letter is sent, and then went to management and told them there was no way in hell we could hire such an incompetent and uncouth ass. Which brings me to the point - it's ok to aggrandize your résumé a little bit... you're trying to sell yourself, after all! However, if you find yourself in an interview with a fuqing FreeBSD committer, it just might be a good idea to show a little humility and say, "sorry, I don't really know it that well" when you are asked to compare and contrast the stateful packet inspection capabilities of FreeBSD's ipfw with that of OpenBSD's pf and Linux's netfilter - if you try to bullshit then you're gonna end up on the white-board... and crackheads never escape the wrath of the white-board. If you're a crackhead and you know it, clap your hands! *clap clap* ::splif |
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