Nice one! It also shows how much a candidate understood about areas they didn't directly work on, which is telling a lot about how a person works and how they go about fixing stuff. There's a lot of candidates that think it's ok to ignore stuff outside of their strict area of competence. While it's possible to be proficient even with a very narrow focus, the mentality and willingness to look at the whole system (or at least outside the direct area one is assigned to) always leads to become a much more effective engineer.
When i get answers like "i don't know, this was X's job" i take It as an indicator of the experience of the person I'm talking to.
Also interesting to hear the follow up on the "something that catastrophically failed in this system, how you fixed it, and what it taught you."
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I too use whiteboards - though in my case it's a "draw me a system you've worked on before" to assess their communication skills.
That's followed by "OK, now, talk to me about something that catastrophically failed in this system, how you fixed it, and what it taught you."
Nice one! It also shows how much a candidate understood about areas they didn't directly work on, which is telling a lot about how a person works and how they go about fixing stuff. There's a lot of candidates that think it's ok to ignore stuff outside of their strict area of competence. While it's possible to be proficient even with a very narrow focus, the mentality and willingness to look at the whole system (or at least outside the direct area one is assigned to) always leads to become a much more effective engineer.
When i get answers like "i don't know, this was X's job" i take It as an indicator of the experience of the person I'm talking to.
Also interesting to hear the follow up on the "something that catastrophically failed in this system, how you fixed it, and what it taught you."