All posts by Fernando Carrillo Castro

Huge comic book fan, geek by choice

NI Interview

I had a job interview with a big silicon valley company, the job post on LinkedIn said it was SRE focused on Java.

The interview with the recruiter was great, he told me what the process will be and what the job will be.

There were 2 interviews one regarding programming and one on systems, this was told me to in advance by the recruiter.

  1. Tech interview:
    1.  The first tech interview was scheduled for 60 minutes, I received the call 8 min later(fault wasn’t on my side) and the interview stopped at 52 minutes, I wasn’t give back the 8 minutes ( 13% of the interview)…I know I did good there but I felt those 8 minutes longer would have been enough to answer the last question.
    2. I thought that the first interview will focus on Java per the Java SRE thing, I solved couple of questions on Java but then I was asked to switch to another language, luckily I know a few others and was able to switch to Python but that was very odd to me.
  2. System interview:
    1. The questions on the second interview weren’t formulated in a straight way, nor in a direct way. I feel we didn’t move fast enough because he was asking in a cryptic way. This was the way it happen with the first question:
      1. Interviewer: Can you explain what happen when you do :curl -l linked.com
      2. Me: Yeah a request is send to linked servers, it passes through my router, modem, then ISP.
      3. I: But I mean what happens when I press enter?
      4. M: It launches the request that goes to the ISP to solve the direction.
      5. I: Where is the direction for linked.com stored?
      6. M: On DNS.
      7. I: How is it store?
      8. M: As an IP
      9. I: Whats the format of the IP?
      10. M: You mean like the octet?
      11. I: Yeah but lets get back to the what happens with the curl?
      12. M: Well the curl launches the request
      13. I: How does the curl works?
      14. M: What do u mean? it checks/request a page.
      15. I: But how does curl gets executed?
      16. M: It gets loaded from the disk?
      17. I: Yeah but where is curl stored?
      18. M: /usr/bin
      19. I: But how does it know is it on /usr/bin?
      20. M:You mean like the path?
      21. I:Yeah, thats what I meant.
      22. M…OK
    2. I was recommended to read the Google SRE book, I took the Google SRE course on Coursera and read several of the chapters on the book, still I didn’t feel I was asked something related to that methodology.

At the core the job I thought I applied for and according to the recruiter and first interview it was Java SRE but I didn’t get asked a single Java SRE question.

Because of all of this I decided to give my feedback to the interviewer, I knew I wasn’t the right fit for the job since the second interview started but I thought there was room for improvement….but I didn’t heard back anything.

Interview policy

I have 1 interview policy

  1. Take it.
    1. Doesn’t matter if you are not going to take the job or if the initial job offering was too small.
    2. Taking the interview will:
      1. Allow yourself to test your knowledge.
      2. Get yourself confidence for when an interview really matters to you.
      3. If you get an offer
        1. It will make you feel safe, just in case you suffer a work force reduction (WFR)
        2. You can always ask for more, now they know you are worth it =).

Urgent and important

I took a leadership class while I was studying an MBA and I think it has been one of the most important classes I have taken.

This allows me to notice if the management is good or not, that’s why this class it was so important to me, if I don’t like nor respect the management, I will move some place else.

In leadership, you have to be able to differentiate the urgent from the important , otherwise things are going to blow up in your face.

You can read/watch more about that below:

https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-master-your-priorities-with-the-urgent-important-matrix-a7904de55266

My leadership

While the recruiters never buys that I’m a leader that can guide, mentor and develop a group of persons, I do:

  1. I’m a leader while I’m teaching.
    1. Guided hundreds of undergrad students from 1st sem to the last to develop their tech skills.
    2. Guided at least 100 students on their masters.
  2. I’m a leader while directing a thesis
    1. Guided a handful of students on their own research, each one of them picking me from other of students.
  3. I’m a leader while  I’m tutoring my students
    1. Around 20 students picked me for guiding them through all their careers, most of them now works on the important IT companies on the country.
  4. Most importantly: I’m my own leader.
    1. If I can’t be my own leader, I cannot guide anybody else.

Too bad this doesn’t count for IT Recruiter, because I also act as a PM for this.

 

The second best teacher you will ever have

Long time ago I was taking a CS course and the instructor told us that he will be the second best reacher we will ever have, which of course left us wandering who will be the best? ourselves? some archetype role model?

He ended us saying that the best teacher we will ever have is and will be Google, he will be able to teach whatever subject much quicker that anybody else, so he will aspire to be our second best teacher.

Since then, I have been trying to become the second best teacher for all my students =)

Stealing client list

I had a round of interviews with a company and the talked several times with the tech recruiter.

At the end the things didn’t workout by 1 thing or another.

Several months later, same tech recruiter contacted me by my personal email saying that she had an opening for me, thing is she wasn’t working for the same company; she didn’t even introduce herself she just said that she found my email on linkedin (I didnt have any review by her at the time).

That just sound like when I salesperson quit and moves to another company in the same industry and tries to steal all the previous clients.

1 week later I got a call from one of her peers, saying that he got my phone from her and had a great opening for me.Of course I said no

Reston, Virginia, WLS

I was approached by a recruiter for a job on Reston, Virginia as a WLS admin.

The offer was tempting, expense enough for pay the rent and then some, 1 round trip every year for me and my wife and an open salary. Bad thing about the salary is that,  even if it was open, it will be on MXN, so if the MXN devaluates against the USD I will be making less money on and more expensive place…why would I agree to that? If the salary would have been on USD, I will still be thinking about it but on MXN, no way jose