On 03/08/2012 02:08 PM, Invisible wrote:
> Around about April, a bunch of big wigs from the USA come over and call
> an "all hands meeting".

> "We may have to close the UK site. We are currently entering into a
> consultation period. This is your opportunity to give us ideas for how
> we can keep the site open."

> ...and they're closing us NOW?? Just as we've turned a corner? Just as
> the equipment you just bought for us has started delivering multiple
> major new contracts?
>
> Are you mental??

Heh. I left out the best part...



First, this meeting happened. And then, THE VERY NEXT DAY, I was 
checking an email and I noticed that I had a message from Google. You 
know, the famous Internet giant? THAT Google. It's a message from a 
recruiter wanting to set up a telephone interview with me.

So, one day I'm told I don't have a job any more, and THE NEXT DAY I'm 
told that Google want to interview me.

Can you say "fate"??



...well, that was April. As you can probably tell by the fact that I'm 
not dancing around the place in manic euphoria, I didn't get the job.

The interview seemed to be going great. And then the guy starts asking 
me questions like "how many entries does an I-node hold?" and "what is 
the name of the kernel function which returns most of the main 
information about a directory entry?"

Uh, yeah, I have absolutely no idea, man. I've used Linux once or twice, 
but I have NO FREAKING IDEA about really low-level details like 
filesystem data structures or kernel APIs or anything. (Apparently the 
answer to the second question is lstat(). I thought it might be fstat(), 
but that's for files, not directories...)

So... yeah. Apparently the specific job I applied for has really 
low-level knowledge of Linux as a /hard requirement/, not negotiable. So 
that was pretty much the end of the interview process. Within minutes 
the guy was off the phone.

Maybe it was fate. Fate trying to tell me that I'm aiming way, way too 
high. :-/

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