Site Reliability Engineer - Entry Level Interview Experience - Mountain View, California
Process
I was contacted via InMail by a recruiter who was very interested in my skills. We set up a phone interview for the same day.
I moved on to the first of two phone screen interviews. The first was a very easy programming challenge, and the second assessed knowledge in many subjects.
I passed both of these easily and was brought on site. The hotel provided was very run-down and cheap. While not a deal-breaker, it contributed to my dissatisfaction with the process.
The on-site portion consisted of about six different interviews and challenges.
The first challenge was a live debugging task. I was given a RHEL VM and several prompts involving fixing the webserver. These were ridiculous. One issue was within a compiled binary that Apache includes, and I was expected to pinpoint the exact line in the binary causing the problem. After failing this part, I was told I was supposed to hot-fix it in assembly. I stated that if I encountered this in production, I would likely update the package and move on.
The second challenge was a system architecture design on a whiteboard. I was asked to draw and explain a system architecture, starting from a single server and scaling to multiple data centers. This was relatively straightforward.
Following this, there was lunch with one of the managers, and immediately after, a behavioral interview with a different manager.
Next was an interview designed to "grill me on everything." The level of detail requested was absurd. One question involved writing pseudo-code to re-create the 'ls' command, which is almost certainly not something an SRE would do.
The final challenge was also a "grill you on everything" interview. I was given a table of Nagios alerts and 60 seconds to prioritize which alerts I would respond to first. I failed this significantly, as I spent the first 20 seconds reading the prompt and was expected to decipher cryptic hostnames. The interviewer was condescending and directly asked if I had ever used Linux. I was then presented with a scenario involving a database issue and asked how I would communicate it to my superiors.
At the end of the last challenge, I had to catch a flight immediately, leaving no time to ask questions or speak with anyone else.
My overall impression was that they were seeking an operations person who was also a competent programmer, demanding five years of experience while offering an entry-level salary. They repeatedly stated they weren't looking for pure operations people but someone bridging development and operations; after the interview, I found this claim hard to believe.
Several of my interviewers were rude and condescending, especially considering I was a senior in college with only nine months of hands-on job experience. A few weeks later, I received a call informing me I was "too junior" for the position. I believe what they are looking for is extremely difficult to find, and they did a poor job of communicating their expectations for the role.
Questions
Name as many TCP control bits as you can, off the top of your head.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the LinkedIn Site Reliability Engineer - Entry Level role in Mountain View, California.
Success Rate
LinkedIn's interview process for their Site Reliability Engineer - Entry Level roles in Mountain View, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very negative feelings for LinkedIn's Site Reliability Engineer - Entry Level interview process in Mountain View, California.
LinkedIn Work Experiences
- 5.0Great Place to WorkSenior Web Developer • Current EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesOctober 7, 2013Pros: InDays - Dedicated days given back to employees to hack, work at a nonprofit, or learn. Dedicated and focused CEO. Fun employees. Members first thinking.Cons: No engineering presence in SF. Challenging pace. Hyper growth pains: * Management training * Priority setting
- 5.0Best job of my careerSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesApril 22, 2014Pros: Pros: * Good positive culture. There are a good number of bright, passionate, hard-working people who want to kick donkey (hey, Glassdoor, don't complain about my bad language without telling me what words offend your delicate sensibilities) and will work together to do so. * This is Silicon Valley, and work-life balance is a struggle at any company. But, I think LinkedIn offers a good balance. People work hard because they are passionate. Stepping out in the middle of the day to go to an event at your kid's school is totally fine. Yes, many (most?) people check email or work from home in the evenings, but leaving work at 5 or 5:30 is also pretty normal. * Some of the older reviews (which I read when I joined) talk about politics and infighting. I think that may have been somewhat accurate when I joined, but now I feel that there is a genuine good culture of cross-team collaboration. Things aren't perfect, but they are good. * Professional development. They want their employees to have a "transformative experience" in their time at LinkedIn. It's cheesy, but that actually has been my experience. I think this is more than lip service. They offer one-day courses on things like presentation skills, and I recently took a formal (and high-quality) 7-day training on a technical topic. * Good management. Lots of complaints about managers in the older reviews. The problem was that the company was growing quickly and promoting from within (which is fine), but not giving these first-time managers any training or guidance. I'm not a manager, but I'm pretty sure they now take this very seriously, and mid- and lower-level managers are given training and guidance. My manager is a vastly better manager than he was a few years ago; I don't believe he accomplished this without support from the company. * Hiring good people. We have high hiring standards, both technical and attitude. Some earlier employees were and still are awesome; some not so much. Hiring was revamped/formalized a few years ago, and the quality of new hires has gone up and been more uniform. * This really is a plus: a couple of people who were awful were discretely let go. This is great for people who aren't awful. I respect and appreciate management for doing this. No, this isn't chilling or scary in any way. It's healthy. Good people attract good people. Bad people repel good people. * Perks. I don't care about this type of stuff much, but LinkedIn is next door to Google and competing for the same employees, so there are a lot of free creature comforts (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, occasional massage, etc.). I'm pretty confident LinkedIn is not as over-the-top as Google, but it is over-the-top enough (Kombucha on tap). * LinkedIn always says "members first," and they mean it. That said, the data they have access to is impressive. They know more about your company than your company does. They know where everyone at your company worked last. They know about their skills. I can't believe that this data is anywhere near being fully exploited.Cons: LinkedIn is not perfect, but I have a hard time coming up with anything serious. Here goes: Not everyone is great. Some early employees who have done quite well financially are not as good as later employees who contribute more. I admit this is petty and irrational, but that irritates me a little.
- 5.0Good place to work!Software Engineer • Current EmployeeMountain View, California, United StatesJune 9, 2014Pros: Reasonable perks. Good work/life balance. Supportive management.Cons: Short ladder. Hard to move up in the technical chain. The management chain seems OK.
LinkedIn Interview Questions
