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From: jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc,comp.misc
Subject: Re: Lieing to get a job
Message-ID: <131@minya.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-Sep-87 08:20:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: minya.131
Posted: Fri Sep  4 08:20:03 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 5-Sep-87 17:44:07 EDT
References: <957@bc-cis.UUCP> <1839@tekig5.TEK.COM> <961@bc-cis.UUCP> <1372@sirius.UUCP>
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> My interview went something like:
> Them:  Do you know CICS 
> Me:    NO
> Them:  Do you know Adabas
> Me:    NO
> Them:  Do you know PL/1
> Me:    NO
> Them:  
>     You're the first honest guy we have interviewed - when can you start
>     so we can arrange the courses!

It sure would be nice if more interviewers would take this approach.  
Unfortunately, the usual response is to observe that you don't have
the right background, and dismiss you.

I've seen this a lot.  For instance, I've worked on the innards of 
a bunch of operating systems, including writing device drivers for
some pretty funny devices with some even funnier system interfaces.
I even had one case where I wrote a couple-thousand-line driver,
in assembly language, and when the device was rolled in, we just
plugged it in and my driver worked the first time.  You'd think
this might qualify me as a kernel hacker in just about anyone's
mind.

Lately I've been to a lot of interviews where they ask me if I've
ever written any device drivers for Unix.  I've answered honestly:
I've tweaked a bunch of existing drivers, and sometimes made some
major additions; I've cloned drivers and modified them for devices
that weren't quite the same; but, no, I haven't written a whole
Unix device driver myself.  After all, with the existing drivers
lying about, it's pretty unlikely that you'll ever need to do a
whole one; you'd have to have a rather unusual device to need a
driver radically different from all those in the library.

The response?  I clearly don't have enough Unix kernel background
for their job.  Good-bye; we'll talk to you again when you learn
something about Unix.

Even an honest fellow like me (:-) is sorely tempted to at least
stretch the fact just a wee bit....

-- 
	John Chambers <{adelie,ima,maynard}!minya!{jc,root}> (617/484-6393)