Let’s assume you went against my advice from a few months ago and you actually secured that job. That’s actually quite an achievement, but it’s not what I intend to write about. What you leave behind is, most of the time, more significant than what you think is being set in front of you.
Most likely your current job does not compare with the likes of Googamazbook. That’s OK. Or you feel that you did not get to achieve everything you hoped for when you signed up for your current, soon to be previous position. That’s also OK. Let’s walk through some possible frustration points:
1. Promotions (lack of)
You do feel you deserved more and you were passed on for promotions due to unclear, maybe non-professional reasons. Most likely this is true, but it does not always have to be about you as an individual; it’s about the way companies work.
The long interview day is nearing its end. Googamazbook got the best and the worst out of you (well, neither of those, but I’m trying to put some literature in here); the last interviewer comes in, smiles condescendently and greets you with:
Time for the easy interview, heh?
Yes, you have all the reasons to be concerned and feel you’re just one step away from failure (yes, why didn’t you spend the day by the pool in the basement of the many stars hotel they got you a room in for the interview?). But without further ado, the questions start pouring in:
Question 1
How do you figure out if a process is CPU bound or I/O bound?
Tricky! Let’s not jump to the conclusion. There are 2 variables here, this means we have 4 possibilities:
You’re in a tiny room at Googamazbook and the interviewer comes in, says hi (if you’re lucky), presents themselves (they’re really into doing you a favor) and then starts asking questions. The easy one comes first:
What happens when you run telnet www.brainware.ro 80 ? Please go on through all the layers.
Warmed up from the systems interview, you start talking about /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf: name resolution and then the actual connection to the http port. If your knowledge stops here, please do go on reading this text. Or just do go on, maybe I forgot something.
1. Name Resolution
The name resolution protocol is performed by sending an UDP packet to each resolver found in /etc/resolv.conf. The UDP packet has a small header containing: