Perhaps I Blew the Interview

As with everyone who isn't a professional pit boss, I find it necessary to have gainful employment for the sustanance of our family. Presently, I am employed by an interesting company with interesting leadership. Our CEO 'bet' our 'investors' that 'he' could deploy not one, but two data centers in 45 days or less and spend less than $2.5 million doing it. Just FYI, it can be done, but only if you actually order the equipment. Unfortunately, someone in finance missed that memo. Interestingly enough, one truth has become tragically apparent to me. You can not build a first class data center utilizing second class equipment with a third world mentality.

Anyway, in contemplating how I came to this partcular point in my career, I was reflecting on some of the more interesting jobs and interviews I have had. One interview I had some years ago consisted of a non-technical, somewhat condesending, recent grad of Brown reading technical questions to me, and recording my answers on paper. Apparently, us techies can't be trusted to write. The questions were mostly 'Unix Trivia' type questions with a smattering of real systems administration questions. The answer to one of the trivia questions consisted of a fairly complex command with several modifying arguments, so I told the young lady what command would be used, and what you would want it to do. She replied that she needed the exact command syntax. I told her that I didn't know the exact syntax, that if I were actually doing this, I'd look at the manual page. With disdain dripping from her voice, she said "Don't you want to guess?"

In my senior systems administrator voice, I informed her "Only idiots guess."

Somewhat peeved, she asked "Is THAT what you want me to write for your answer?"

"Do you need help spelling 'idiot'?"

I think I blew the interview.