I got interviewed by a junior HR at Google for a Linux administration position. Now, I know that I know some stuff, but I also know that there’s so much to know that I don’t think I’m ready for Google yet. But Google didn’t knew that, so they wanted to talk to me. I said, what the hell, I might as well talk to them.

On the phone interview, the recruiter asked me first some self assessment questions, in which I could have rated myself from 0 (know nothing) to 9 (wrote the book). I think I competent enough to know that are some really tough Linux gurus out there in the Stratosphere to rate myself below 5 on all questions. So my self-assessed score was between 0 and 5 out of 9.

Then the recruiter gave me a small three questions test. I could have chosen from “Linux Administration”, “TCP/IP” and “Computer Science”. Since Linux Administration is such a huge field and I forgot almost all Computer Science that I learned in University, I chose TCP/IP networking, a much smaller field.

The first question was: how many bits are in a mac address? I thought, six groups of hex numbers, a hexadecimal letter is 4 bits, so 4×6=24. Since I did that in my mind and my registers are limited, I forgot that there are TWO letters in each group, so it’s 4×2×6=48. Whoops, got that wrong! Next one was to describe the first exchanges in a TCP handshake. I mumbled something along the lines: SYN, ACK, then SYN. Forgot about the ACK. The third question was how many usable IP addresses are in /23 network. I knew that if they asked usable it means that they want me to not count the broadcast and the network address… so the answer was 512-2=510. Got that right!

The recruiter congratulated me on the answer I got right and the one I got almost right (the TCP handshake) and told me to send him my resume so people up the line can have a look at it. Yeah, sure I will… k tnx bye, Bill (ironically, his name was Bill).

The question is: would I trade the experience that I’m gaining now working for diverse projects to working for the geek heaven that it’s Google (even the recruiter, which was supposedly a business major had a typical geeky nasal voice). It’s like going into a monogamous relationship. Would I go for that if I got a really good offer? Or would I still consider my independence more important?