Re: DBA interviews
- From: "GovindanK" <gkatteri@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 05:20:43 -0700
Ryan
There have been a variety of replies from different persons.
Interesting. I normally prefer to ask the candidate questions as given
below. As of now this is what i am able to recollect.
1. You are being asked to takeover from an existing DBA who is quitting
in another 'N' hrs. You have 'N' hrs to take over. What questions will
you ask him? (ofcourse the no of hours 'N' i will fix based on the no.of
databases/current resposibility of the DBA/DBAs).
2. You have taken over an environment where in (for whatever reasons)
the DBA did not show up. Now the setup is orphaned
and you are taking over. How would you approach a situation like this?
3. Questions on Backup and Recovery Strategies.
4. I tell the guy that he has to support a development team of 50-100
SINGLE HANDEDLY BESIDES SUPPORTING PRODUCTION TOO (yep no jokes .. i
know dba's who do both) . This is because, in my experience i have
found lots of DBA's (both in their resume's and thru talking) project an
image as if they can work wonder with Databases but then have little
programming experience. I have seen such guys getting exposed when they
are thrown in the middle of Dev.Support. On the other hand i had to
opportunity to work with "smart" and "intelligent" developers who are
capable of giving ride to the Best of the Best DBAs. If the above
mentioned DBAs get in the middle of such Developers .. god save them
from humiliation. Period. This will bring out both the confidence
level and the attitude of the candidate.
5. Recovery Concepts / Principles ( Yep .. i am repeating). Recovering
is fine .. but the guy should be in a position to answer why he is
adopting a particular approach.
6. How good or bad the guy is when it comes to communicating / fitting
in a team. What kind of managers he/she has worked with (Yes .. this
matters too ..) if so what good qualities he / she acquired from the
manager. One of the managers i worked with for 6 years .. we used to
call him (something akin to ) a Positive minded Hitler. The guy was
RUTHLESS AND EFFICIENT. The only thing he used to RELENTLESSLY pursue is
to Fix "Reasonable Targets" and Go after it day after day / week after
week / month after month. The guy was simply a Master of Planning and a
Task Master too. There are atleast two types of managers 1. Functional
and 2. Operational. The Former category does not really get into "how"
the DBA / Developer / Team Leader went into doing his job . The latter
category does that simply because these guys have "Worked their way up".
These managers know the abc's of their business well and know what
possible pitfall's / human errors might exist while planning and
executing. Not only that, AT EVERY STAGE YOU WILL BE ASKED TO JUSTIFY /
DEFEND THE DECISION YOU MAKE be it technical or from an application
point of view. Working with such managers is a REAL DRILL and at the end
of the day you know what it takes to have a PROFESSIONAL APPROACH AND A
PROFESSIONAL ATTITUDE. Lesser Mortals will run away. I have seen guys
quitting the job and run away.
7. Your shop is being transformed from a non 24x7 to 24x7; What changes
do you forsee in terms of db configuration?
8. Ask him / her how the transformation to DBA took place. How much of
Development experience / Hardcore programming experience / exposure the
person had in terms of languages / OS / Troubleshooting the person has
had prior to becoming a DBA? I have seen candidates who have put many
years of DBA exp.in their resume , but when put in the middle of some
good programmers the guys are exposed. A DBA needs to have good IQ +
CommonSense + Presence of Mind. Mere database knowledge will alone NOT
HELP.
and lastly (put the final nail in the coffin)
9. Tell the guy that he shall not use any third party tools like TOAD
etc (and if possible override some Oracle Tools) see how the guy reacts.
That will tell whether the guy had really worked with v$views and dba_
views. This should bring the true color of the DBA out.
It is 5.15 am and i need to get some sleep.
HTH
GovindanK
OCP 8,8i , Brainbench Certified Master DBA ...... and still learning
Oracle
On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 17:45:59 -0400, "ryan gaffuri"
<ryan.gaffuri@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:
> Another thread got me to think that this might be a good topic. What
> types
> of questions do you ask for a senior level position? Most interviews I
> have
> had have been really easy. I had one that was 3.5 hours, but it was just
> hours of the same stuff... not real hard. Most of the 'tricky' stuff are
> picky little syntax things that I think are silly. I have seen some
> interviews posted on the web where they ask tremendous numbers of really
> detailed questions on all sorts of topics.
>
> The three questions I always ask no matter what are the following:
>
> 1. Select, from,where, group by, having, order by: What order are these
> processed in? Then I go into the implications. I'm basically looking to
> see
> if the person understands the set based nature of SQL.
>
> 2. The following is a really tricky counter-intuitive SQL question, that
> I
> have never seen in practice(got it out of an academic textbook. Its
> really
> simple to do in relational algebra) Don't them use Oracle either. I want
> them to do it on a white board(mainly for intimidation, I want to get rid
> of
> people who give up real quick). I don't expect people to get it most of
> the
> time. I just want to see how hard you try. Most people won't even give it
> a
> good try. There are two solutions.
>
> You have 3 tables. Saliors, BoatsXSailors, Boats. This is a many to many
> relationship. Assume the keys are Sailor_id, salXBoat_id, Boat_id. Find
> all
> the sailors that have used all the boats.
>
> I ask other stuff depending on what I am looking for, but I always like
> to
> ask those.
>
> 3. Got this one off asktom. Draw me a picture of the Oracle database
> including all background process, memory structures, and file systems.
> Then
> I ask about interactions. I don't want it memorized, but I want big
> picture
> knowledge about redo, undo, etc...
>
> I ask other stuff depending on what I am looking for. What do you ask?
> What
> traits are you looking for? I'm sure some of you have really hard
> interviews...
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