September 20, 2017 at 11:16 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 10:18 AMI was just thinking I need to look for a watchface like that.
Me, I was going to ask what good is it as a watch if the date and time are both hard-coded...
But at least with it, the phone and watch batteries will never run down!
September 20, 2017 at 11:25 am
September 20, 2017 at 12:07 pm
That's the type of question I'll typically ask, but I'm also flexible about what specific answer is acceptable. What I expect to get out of that is a five minute conversation with related followup questions based on how the conversation flows. I'm willing to remind them that the "I" in ACID stands for isolation so long they follow that up by explaining what isolation is and can tell me what the difference between read committed and read uncommitted.
I would never ask a question like "What is a clustered index?" or "How do you get the current date/time?", but instead I'll ask "How do clustered indexes become fragmented?" or "Why would smalldatetime be an inappropriate datatype for mortgage maturity date?". For me, experiential context and practical application is more important than technical detail. Anyone can memorize the answer to frequently asked pop-quiz style SQL Server questions the night before the interview, but few people (even some with years of experience) can talk about SQL Server architecture intelligently.
I'm sometimes accused of asking odd, irrelevant and even trick questions, but I disagree, because all the candidates I've recommended have turned out to be excellent choices, and that's the whole point of the interview process: to identify the best candidates for the job. During an interview, a candidate should be presented with exact same type of questions they will be expected to answer daily on the job. For example, nobody walks up to the DBA and asks "What is a clustered index?". What they do is ask the DBA why queries on a large clustered table keep getting slower, and the DBA should have the enough SQL Server wisdom to know what to look for and how to fix it.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
September 20, 2017 at 2:17 pm
Eric M Russell - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 12:07 PMI would never ask a question like "What is a clustered index?" or "How do you get the current date/time?"...
I always ask those but not as final questions/answers if they get them right. Those are leaders into other related discussions. If the can't actually answer either of those leader questions, then I know how the rest of the interview is going to go and will limit the number of questions I ask so as to not waste time.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
September 20, 2017 at 2:18 pm
jasona.work - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 11:16 AMSteve Jones - SSC Editor - Wednesday, September 20, 2017 10:18 AMI was just thinking I need to look for a watchface like that.Me, I was going to ask what good is it as a watch if the date and time are both hard-coded...
But at least with it, the phone and watch batteries will never run down!
And, BONUS! It's absolutely correct twice a day if you're not observing 24 hour clocks. 😉
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
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