4/12    Just finished a programming quiz. Do you think critizing the test
        was OK? They wanted someone to write code for something that could
        be done via shell aliases. This was at Riverbed.
        \_ I assume Riverbed is a company and this was an interview?  If so,
           I think this kind of criticism is a great thing to do.  It shows you
           really know your stuff if you can do both.  If they count that
           against you they are idiots and you don't want to work there anyway.
                \_ this was actually after the phone screen. Probably not a
                    good sign. Or maybe the manager's worries too much.
        \_ IMO, the right way to handle something like this is to say, "Oh,
           this would be really easy to do with shell aliases, and I can show
           you how I'd do it that way after I write the code to do it..."
           -dans
        \_ It makes you think twice about their ability to create well
           architected code if they cant come up with a good quiz; especially
           considering what is already out on the net. I have seen too many
           cases these days crafty perlers who write terrible code. Knowing
           what $_ means does not you are good engineer or coder.
           \_ Jesus christ you are an idiot.  A programming quiz is not
              real work.  It is a way of saying "prove to me you can do
              basic tasks in this language."  Making it a simple problem
              means it is something you can actually have someone write
              in half an hour or so.  Most simple tasks are probably easier
              to do with a shell script than with a real program.  So what.
              That's totally orthogonal to the tester's goal.  Oh and I'd
              almost take dans's advice.  Start with answering the problem
              the way they asked and then mention, as an aside, not a
              critisism, something like "you know, if this was something
              I had to solve at work I'd probably just do x instead."
              You don't come across as too good for the test (which looks
              very bad, lots of otherwise good engineers are a disaster
              because they don't work well with others), you show you know
              your mad shell skillz, and you are letting someone know that
              you know to use the right tools for the right job.  I've seen
              people rewrite stuff like find | xargs grep because they
              didn't know diddly about unix.  That kind of stuff is never
              pretty.
              \- sort of the flip side of this, for a sysadmin interview,
                 i've asked questions like "how would you generate a 10
                 random numbers between 1-100 from the shell", "how would
                 you generate the numbers 1-100 from the shell" etc and
                 people who would do it in C are slightly missing the point.
                 people who would do it in C are sort of missing the point.
                 i mean it is fine to say "i dont know how i would do it from
                 the shell, but here is the 5line C program, that took 2min
                 to write", but to say "that's dumb to do from the shell"
                 will not serve you well. yeah, there are a lot of people
                 unfamilar with xargs, mapcar, apply, lambda ...
                 while riverbed may be in an inflationary phase, i suspect
                 they are still small enough that they are being careful
                 about who they hire. the OP had an interesting quandry
                 whether to not to de-anonymize himself on the motd ... if
                 he's an active member of the sloda community he faced either
                 a "oh i dont know about his technical chops, but he seems
                 pleasant enough" to "i havent seen his code, but he seems
                 like a dumbass" ... given that various people here have
                 various riverbed connections.
                 various riverbod connections.