Strange or long interviews.

techdudehere

So they are turning down MIT students and CCIE's right and left but they just decided to hire her buddy who was fresh out of college with no experience. Something doesn't add up here. CCIE or guy who watched for perverts in the college computer lab? HMMMMMM choices.

Iristheangel

@techdudehere - My friend was originally recruited a few months ago when they came down to the UCI campus when the recent class was graduating and interviewed a pool of about 40 graduates. The positions they were looking to fill were entry-level network engineer jobs.My friend said he was asked logic puzzles for three hours straight during his interview. Out of a pool of approx 40 grads, they offered about 3 or 4 UCI EE/CS grads positions (One of which was my buddy). Apparently they went to Stanford to recruit as well. The manager in engineering (Mr Riddle) has a hard-on for CS/EE degrees from these institutions over work experience or certifications. This is actually a fairly normal practice around graduation time at these higher-tiered schools.

All new employees are trained for 4 months to give them the basic foundation of networking knowledge. They only promote from within. That means in order to get into that company, you need to start at the beginning (entry-level network engineer) and learn your way to the top through them. From what they told me in the interviews, it sounds like they promote quickly.

There are plenty of CCIEs, MIT, and Stanford grads in the Bay Area. While having a degree from any one of those institutions or a CCIE will improve your odds at success, it does not guarantee it. This position that I was applying for relies heavily on a mixture of soft skills and technical skills/aptitude to provide support, debugging and configuration assistance to their clients and service providers that use their network product. I, like my friend, excelled with the soft skills but I had the advantage of having technical skills and understanding the networking concepts.

Also... What are you talking about: "Guy who watched for perverts in the college computer lab?"

techdudehere

Computer lab comment was a failed attempt at humour. Long ago I worked the University help desk. On occasion someone was caught on "interesting" websites in the library. I suspect now that everyone has laptops and phones this is uncommon now but 15 years ago......

TechGromit

Iristheangel wrote: »

Third question:
There's an island with 7 wells on the island and there lives a fox and a raven on this island. Wells number 1-6 are on the flat ground and the fox can only reach these wells. The raven can get to all the wells on the island. The wells are all poisonous and the only cure for the poison is by drinking a higher well number. If you are poison, this magically cures you. If not poisoned, you become poisoned. So the fox and the raven don't like each other and decide to duel. They meet up and exchange water cups. The raven dies and the fox lives. Why?

Answer: The fox drank from well number 1 before the duel so whatever water the raven brought him cured him. The fox brought the raven regular water that wasn't from any of the wells so when the raven drank from the 7th well after drinking from the cup, he died.

"Regular water" wasn't part of the given elements of the puzzle, wouldn't the fox just pulled out his gun and shot the raven be just as valid?

Iristheangel wrote: »

I walked out of that place at 4PM. Yes, 8 hours of interviews that I was SURE I was going to fail after I had interviewed with the first guy.

Did they are least give you a break for lunch?

TechGromit

netsysllc wrote: »

and I thought being asked what animal best represents me was odd

The obvious answer is Human, scientifically speaking humans are a type of animal. There would some religious people that would claim otherwise, but to the scientific community humans are animals.

LaSeeno

You're a CCIE and played 8 hours of games?

Iristheangel

I'm a CCIE now. This original thread was from 2012 when I was not a CCIE. Though I did still do a lot of studying back then

Iristheangel

TechGromit wrote: »

"Regular water" wasn't part of the given elements of the puzzle, wouldn't the fox just pulled out his gun and shot the raven be just as valid?



Did they are least give you a break for lunch?

No lunch break but I did get a bathroom break at some point as I recall. I guess I can be happy I didn't have to hold it all day.

LaSeeno

Iristheangel wrote: »

I'm a CCIE now. This original thread was from 2012 when I was not a CCIE. Though I did still do a lot of studying back then

Congrats, I obviously missed that. So... it appears you made the right decision. Guy sounded like an ******* anyway and probably wasn't as smart as he thought.

kurosaki00

Sufferin succotash! Someone necroing threads.
Although it was a great read lol, thank you.

TechGromit

MentholMoose wrote: »

I remember the first weird question I had during an interview was, "how many tires are there in the US?"

I would have said 4 for every car in the United States.

Iristheangel wrote: »

This was an interview for an entry-level network engineer for an actual company that creates and sells networking equipment.

Interesting enough, Cisco is headquartered in San Jose.

the_Grinch wrote: »

The curse? I had to stand outside on my cell phone to do the interviews and trains kept passing by.

I had a few of those phone interviews on a cell, they were all horrible. Sitting in my car on break from work, spotty 3g cell coverage had me repeatedly asking the interviewer to repeat questions. Next time I have one of those, I'll find a vacant office and use a land line.

Iristheangel

TechGromit wrote: »

Interesting enough, Cisco is headquartered in San Jose.

It wasn't Cisco. Most vendors have an office in San Jose: Arista, PAN, A10, HP, F5, Cisco, Broadcom, Brocade, etc. You can't drive around First without running into about 20 different vendors you work with every day.

Heck... even I was made in the bay area

volfkhat

The funny thing about interviews.... they go both ways.

Apparently, some Companies like to set a high bar when it comes to interview/selecting their ideal candidate.

But, do they ever stop to consider: Why would their ideal candidate want to work for them?

(Hell, the ideal candidate could probably solicit multiple job offers.)

I wonder how the VP would have felt if, in the end, you had declined their offer; stating they failed to meet your requirements (culture, personality, etc).

just saying...
/shrug

Iristheangel

LoL. I did actually turn down the job 5 years ago when this thread was originally written. Funny enough, I ran into the director who was the first guy who interviewed me at a friend's wedding 2 years ago. It was a little awkward but not a big deal.

DAVIS NGUYEN

Thank you for sharing the experience!

volfkhat

Iristheangel wrote: »

I just wanted to update everyone on how everything worked out with the Saturday interview. I got a call last night at 10PM from the first interviewer (Mr Logic Puzzles) and he offered me the job but he wasn't happy about it. I guess he wasn't a red herring. As he put it, he felt that I did poorly with my interview with him and he's looking for the engineer type which is why he asked the questions he did. He said that they only usually hire Stanford, MIT, or UCI CS/EE grads because they teach them how to solve problems in that school and he was looking for someone to roll up their sleeves to answer the questions he presented which he didn't feel he got from me. He definitely wouldn't have picked me but he was outvoted by the remaining 6 managers included the last guy who he even admitted was the toughest interviewer of the bunch and who couldn't stop saying great things about me. He went on to say that it's easy for people to read books to learn topics but that doesn't mean they can solve problems or approach things from an engineer state of mind. I definitely agree with that last statement but the fact that I think he failed to realize or didn't care about was that his other interviewers were asking me scenario-based or troubleshooting questions which did test my problem-solving skills and I answered almost all of them correctly (which is why they were so impressed by me). Anyways, definitely not the warm welcome I was hoping for.

WOW.
My apologies.... i somehow missed this post.

Un(freakin)believable. That guy was a total jack@ss.
When i said "interviews go both ways" and the culture matters, etc; THIS is exactly what i was talking about.

sigh.
The most annoying part of his temper-tantrum/hissy-fit; he got exactly what he wanted:
You Not taking the position.


I wouldn't have taken the job either... but i would have sent a lengthy, eloquent, critical email to the VP detailing said interaction with mr jack@ss. I would have highlighted/pointed to the conflicting message: WHere you get your degree Matters/dontMatters. In short, I would have totally obliterated the guy (constructively, of course). By the end of my email, there would be NO doubt why i was declining the position.

With that being said,
i admit it would have been completely disingenuous. (The real factors: the S.O. relocation, underwhelming compensation package, etc).

but WHo Cares....
if Mr Jack@ss can be passive-agressive... then so can I.
/shrug