Inane Technical Interview Questions

It still astonishes me that technical interviewers still ask inane and stupid questions.  I was recently on the receiving end of such an interview.  I got questions like "How do you determine the release number of a Red Hat Linux operating system?"  My answer was to look at "uname -a".  Apparently, that answer was not good enough. It turns out the release version is kept in /etc/issue which I had forgotten, because such knowlege is used infrequently.  But I knew how to find out the answer which I think is more important. I also got questions like what files do you need to change to reconfigure the IP address of a RHEL server.  Well, I do not know the specific file names.  I do know that they are in /etc/sysconfig, but I do not waste brain space memorizing the specific files. It aso slipped my mind that you also need to change the IP to hostname mapping found in /etc/hosts for the bootstrap sequence to work properly.

These sorts of questions end up being "trick" questions and are not a good way at getting to someones technical skills in a specific technology.  All these answers are easily available on the Web or in the online documentation.  Better questions to get to technical competence would go beyond rote memorization.  For Unix/Linux systems a question which asks a candidate to explain the overall bootstrap sequence in general for a server would get at whether a candidate has in depth knowledge of the OS and its startup sequence.  I got such a question in a different interview.  I was asked how a Web application works and what went on technically under the covers.  My answer showed a breadth of knowlege about the various technical components which showed I had a deep understanding of how the pieces fit together and more importantly how they interacted.

An even better question would be to ask a candidate what kind of approach they would take to troubleshoot a specific problem scenario.  Or a question which asks how you would go about finding the answer to some of the dumb questions asked above.  Technical interviews should discern both the technical competence as well as whether the candidate has the ability to do critical thinking. I would much rather hire someone who knows nothing about a specific technology, but has the skills to seek out knowledge about that technology and fit the pieces together into a coherent mental model of the technology.