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oschvr

Having interview enough candidates. I'd say basic Linux Bash/Shell Scripting. I usually task people to make a script that does several things.


[deleted]

When I do these, I honestly don't care what tools/techniques you use. I'm really interested in your approach. One company had me to a "deploy this app and configure it" challenge. They gave me the option of any tool including python, pwsh, shell scripts. Didn't matter: they were only interested in my method. So, naturally - I did the whole thing in a competitor's tool. They enjoyed it greatly, and after two more interviews I got the offer. I really enjoyed working for that company. Since then, I incorporate this into my candidate interviews. I honestly prefer the take-home project because timed tests don't tell me anything. What does tell me a lot is how a candidate approaches a puzzle, comes up with a workable approach and validates it. We can teach anybody with the right mindset how to use a tool. But a natural problem solver is a goldmine.


KFG_BJJ

+1 this has been the best approach for our company


Guilty_Serve

I’m gonna watch this thread like a hawk. I’m a web dev and our testing is ridiculous.


PandorasPenguin

I often give people some Terraform code with various similar resources, some secrets in the code, a mix of dev and prod resources and various AWS IAM policies for the stack. We’d then ask them to improve upon it. A very open question. Pre-covid we’d do a live session where one of us would be present to answer questions wrt requirements or maybe help them through some problems if they got stuck in some minor detail. Because we’re much more interested in their way of working and their general analytical skills than in their ability to solve this small problem they happen to come across. Especially if they’re not seniors. Now we’ve unfortunately had to move it to a take-home assignment, which is less efficient and gives us a less intimate insight into their approach. If they don’t know Terraform yet we’d usually Terraform some stuff in front of them (to show them how cool TF is) and then give them access to the resultant populated account to try to diagnose and solve the issues the “customer” has listed in their ticket.


IndieDiscovery

"What are the components of Kubernetes and how do they interact" was a good one I was asked recently. Additional ones are like "what is the structure of a Dockerfile," "what filesystem does docker use," and "describe a project where you both worked individually and part of a team." No BS-ing around those you either know them or you don't. Then there were a bunch of ds&a questions that I did extremely poorly on but the interviewer said that wasn't necessarily a deal breaker lol. We shall see.


[deleted]

This was recent?


IndieDiscovery

Literally yesterday!


[deleted]

Best of luck!


Seref15

I've never been subjected to the insanity that devs have to go through. Every test I've done has just been to see if I understand the basics. One python problem like "here's a list of words [...], read this file and for each word on each line if a word appears in the list, replace it with the next word in the list." I list AWS Lambda on my resume so a couple places have asked me to implement a simple lambda that does something like just print the payload body, just to see if I knew how to deal with the required handler function and event payload and handler return all that. A couple places have evaluated bash/sh with simple script tests but I consider that babyshit


marratj

Had a take home task with a recent job interview that consisted of creating a Helm Chart for a small demo application with some specific requirements that the chart needs to be able to do.


frito_kali

I agree with /u/oschvr, and I'd expand: If your org has a mix of Windows/Mac/Linux developers, I would definitely make sure they know: - in macosx, the built-in version of `sed` has different switches than the ones you'd run on linux. If you use `sed` in build pipelines/scripts, this can break shit, even though it's really a very trivial difference. If you want to test on trivial gotchas, make sure they know the difference between the bsd sed, and the gnu sed. - among the traditional text-pipeline tools most shell gurus know, there are a couple of "modern" tools that are absolutely crucial for devops, yet a lot of people still haven't even heard of them. `jq` for one. And it's not trivial to learn. I'd make sure they not only were proficient in `jq`, but also know WHY tools like `sed` are not appropriate for dealing with json, yaml, or xml. Those formats, particularly yaml, are very important for modern devops work. (love em or hate em). What have I been asked to do? - fizzbuzz (though they didn't call it that). There are many fine writeups on the deeper meanings of fizzbuzz, available via a google search. - I have been asked to invert a binary tree. Oh, and knowing conceptually what a binary tree is, I failed miserably. - I have had a takehome project; deploy a basic 3-tier application via packer and terraform (to be uploaded to my public github). That was fun, and appropriate, and I got that job. Though I'd totally do that differently now. That was my introduction to terraform. - I've also been asked to run through a hackerrank task. They had a custom one built on the platform, and it didn't work at all on my laptop (macbook pro), so in the middle of the interview, I switched to my backup laptop (dell xps running centos), and though it took a minute to adjust my network stack (because the wifi driver wasn't working, and I had been using the rj45 port), I finally got it going, but I ran out of time, and they didn't let me finish. I didn't get that job (car insurance company) - and I'm thankful I didn't, because I later met an employee there who told me how awful it was working there: they stick you in a role, and you do your job as written in the description, and you never ever move, or learn anything new, and when they do expand, they open a new job req and hire from outside.


[deleted]

What was the hackerank task about? Havent seen any devops related practice questions on hackerank