I sent the resume to the online site and was emailed back within a week.

Then I had a screening interview with the recruiter, who explained the process and learned about my background.

Two weeks later, I received an invitation to a phone interview with an engineer.

He tested my knowledge in three possible IT scenarios, asked questions, and had me expand on possible solutions.

If you want to distribute a large file (gigabytes) across a large cluster (100+ machines), how do you do it?

Pets +------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment | | breed | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | | | acquisition_date | datetime | NO | | NULL | | +------------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

Customers +-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+ | id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment | | name | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | | +-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

Sales +-------------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +-------------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | customer_id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | | | pet_id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | | | date | datetime | NO | | NULL | | +-------------+----------+------+-----+---------+-------+

Q1: How many pets of each breed has the shop ever owned?

Look for a string in a very long string – a needle in a haystack. Write the program in pseudo-code.