Is this a smart way to find a good sysadmin?

http://sysengquiz.tumblr.com/

by phred_pui • 14 years ago

6 7 14 years ago

sysengquiz.tumblr.com

Only if you think that knowing the syntax of the puppet config language is a show-stopper.

I mean, I could ask people the proper incantation to rebuild a sendmail domaintable without using a helper Makefile. You either know it or you don't, but it's not something everyone is going to know, and it's not 1:1 for whether you're a good sysadmin or not.

Trivia is one thing, but blocking trivia?

rachelbythebay3• 14 years ago

Okay, well, to spoil it for yourself, unrot this:

ybpny.pu, Ehol, Envyf, Wnin, CUC, ubcr lbh fcrnx (naq jevgr) Trezna.

phred_pui2• 14 years ago

The presumption was that puppet is an important standard in System Engineering and thus important to know or at least to understand quickly (the stage is solvable also without puppet knowledge, the errors are in the brackets/puncutation)

rachelbythebay3• 14 years ago

Okay, so maybe it's not puppet, but then it's some other language... whatever uses that => construct to do stuff. I assume it's Ruby or something else that's Shiny these days, and that's not anything I normally use. As a result, that part of it was very much based on poking around and trying different things.

So now it's actually three things. One, it's puppet. Two, it's knowing that puppet uses a particular language's pet syntax to convey things. Three, know that syntax and apply fixes to the example until it can be parsed.

I guess if they're looking for someone who's going to power through it no matter what, then it served its purpose.

BTW, awk vs. grep vs. cut? Come on. You can (ab)use all three tools to get exactly the same output. grep takes a lot of stupid showboating, but it can be done.

fringedgentian• 14 years ago

But you don't even have to know what Puppet does to Google search "node puppet example" and see where the syntax was off.

Zanyinj• 14 years ago

Loved the quiz:) Finished it, even though it's the first time i've ever heard about puppet.

Is this a smart way to find a good sysadmin?

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