Cultivate questions
Imagine that you’re sitting in a room interviewing a potential candidate for a position on your team. It’s not too hard to imagine, right, because it happens all the time. You know the next question I’m going to ask: what questions will you ask this candidate? I know a lot of people who have “set questions” they use to evaluate a candidate, such as “what is the OSPF type four for,” or “why do some states in the BGP peering session not have corresponding packets?” Since I’ve worked on certifications in the past (like the CCDE), I understand the value of these sorts of questions. They pinpoint the set and scope of the candidate’s knowledge, and they’re easy to grade. But is easy to grade what we should really be after?
Let me expand the scope a little: isn’t this the way we see our own careers? The engineer with the most bits of knowledge stuffed away when they die wins? I probably need to make a sign that says that, actually, just to highlight the humor of such a thought.
The problem is it simply isn’t a good way to measure an engineer, including the engineer reading this Continue reading