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from the boss-wants-to-see-how-you-handle-pressure? dept.
I recently applied for a job in Silicon Valley.
The recruiter had me take a battery of tests that measured my verbal, mathematical and visual aptitude. I'd guess it was a mini-IQ test; it wasn't a mini-MMPI. As a result of the tests I was invited to interview onsite.
At the end of the interview the manager declared that he wanted me to take some tests.
His tests were brain teasers he had downloaded from a random website. The brain teasers had nothing to do with the work I was interviewing for. He seemed to ignore the battery of sophisticated tests I had been subjected to, and to believe that he could do better.
What is the REAL purpose of using brain teasers during an employment interview?
Is it just to make the candidate feel stupid? Are any of these people qualified to interpret the results? Are any of them industrial psychologists? Or is this all about power and control?
Please advise.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @06:04PM (2 children)
I wouldn't call "replace the cable" the "ultimate answer" for that particular situation. Especially given that link lights are claiming it's probably good.
It is, however, admittedly. a lot better than "replace the machine" (and I had a supervisor in an IT department who would have done just that--but this supervisor also ran a computer company under an alias and had given himself a contract to supply new computers to our organization).
But sure, "try another cable" would be a diagnostic step, but not necessarily the first one. Looking at the IP configuration (address, routing table, etc.) is an example of something you can and probably should do before starting to swap hardware items around.
Last time I had those symptoms, the problem was that the gateway had dropped parts of its configuration leading to a misconfiguration-via-dhcp of the host in question. Fixed by replacing the gateway device (not the first time it had randomly dropped configuration and it was under service contract). The cable turned out to be OK.
Not saying you don't have a good approach--finding out how someone things is a big help.
I had an interview once with the problem posed, how to troubleshoot "a network printer that won't print". I mentioned that you could try to ping it or make sure it otherwise shows up on the network, check the printer to be sure it's connected and ready for print jobs, print a config page and verify its configuration, etc.
They were looking for "Try to print locally" and actually said "The answer is try to print locally." They didn't know what a "network printer" was; they meant a windows machine with its local printer shared on the network via SMB. I mentioned that such a thing might be better termed a "shared Windows printer", and from the head of the IT department got the sage answer "same thing." I got the job but it didn't last long.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:11PM (1 child)
Probably good, doesn't mean it is good. Last few jobs I've had this has been #1 connectivity issue. Still have link at both ends, networking config is fine. Just can't pass packets. (oddly enough dhcp still works but anything heavier doesn't).
It's been a strange one, so I've fallen in love with this question cause you get a person to walk thru what they would check.
Much like you said, I would expect, check configuration, check link, check the switch. BUT the first thing you swap in my world is the cable (before you go down the rabbit hole of replacing nics, motherboards, etc, etc).
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday October 05 2018, @08:17PM
When I first learned to crimp ends on ethernet cables, I quickly learned that there is a way to screw it up which makes the link lights glow but fails to transfer data. It was a bit mystifying until I went with the "try a different cord" option.