Don't want to play the smartass here as it's true that this information can be quickly found with a search, as almost everything, but not knowing the answer straight away actually DOES give a seniority indication, at least for sysadmins. Knowing the difference between Raid 0, 1 and 5 (the most used ones) should be granted for sysadmins and expected also from DBAs. my2c
You're absolutely right that I would expect a sysadmin to know these off-the-cuff, but this interview was for a junior software engineer.
It was not advertised as for a DBA or sysadmin position. They also didn't change up the questions after realizing that they weren't going to get anywhere. Instead they just kept going down their list of "okay, what is RAID 2...RAID 3..."
"What is RAID?"
It allows multiple disks to be configured in a way that optimizes for speed or redundancy or a combination of the two.
"What is RAID 0?"
I don't have the specific types of RAID memorized. Rather if I need a specific need, like redundancy, I can google the kind that I need.
"....Ok....So what is RAID 1?"
Do you have any questions that aren't answerable with a google search?
"..."
Turns out they just wanted a DBA.
Don't want to play the smartass here as it's true that this information can be quickly found with a search, as almost everything, but not knowing the answer straight away actually DOES give a seniority indication, at least for sysadmins. Knowing the difference between Raid 0, 1 and 5 (the most used ones) should be granted for sysadmins and expected also from DBAs. my2c
You're absolutely right that I would expect a sysadmin to know these off-the-cuff, but this interview was for a junior software engineer.
It was not advertised as for a DBA or sysadmin position. They also didn't change up the questions after realizing that they weren't going to get anywhere. Instead they just kept going down their list of "okay, what is RAID 2...RAID 3..."
Oh right, for a junior developer these are not required notions. And insisting on Raid 2, 3 and other quite uncommon levels was pointless