Job Interview

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I had my job interview for the "Software Engineering" positions today. It was at 8:30 am which is not my finest hour. I did great on all of the leadership and team type questions, but I failed on two technical questions. Read on so you don't make the same mistakes.

The first question I didn't do great on was about RDBMS normal forms. My reading from that is about 2 years old and I always build to be compliant with at least the third normal form. But they asked about a specific product I'd written and how it fit into that model. I wasn't able to remember the criteria for the forms well enough to answer.

The second thing I missed was SDLC (system develpment life cycle). That just refers to the development model used to create a product/project (waterfall, fountain, spiral etc.). I'm not sure what they wanted there. Nor am I sure they knew themselves ;) So, I spouted some stuff about design, implementation, feedback, and review.

The last thing I messed was a logic problem that I'd answered before, but I couldn't muster it under pressure.

Given a 5 gallon bucket and a 3 gallon bucket how would you measure 1 gallon of water?

Answer: 

fill the 3 gallon bucket
pour it into the 5 gal bucket
fill the 3 gallon bucket again
pour it into the 5gal bucket
The 5 gal will only take 2 more gallons.
So 1 gallon is left in the 3 gal bucket.

All and all the interview went fine for being early in the morning. I hope that I get at least one of those jobs so I can quit working at the callcenter. I'm really holding out for a System's Engineering job in the same unit, but that is pending approval by HR and could be a year out. So this will do in the meantime. Plus, it's a good $5,000 a year pay raise for me.