IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[ViShawn]

Since I realized I had a slight gap in system design, as in scaling large resilient and reliable infrastructures since I only maintained them but never designed them, I ordered this book.

Second book I got and I get the Unix/Linux Handbook tomorrow.

I was making six figures in my last job, so with these next few interviews I'm going to make damn sure I increase my chances and make an impression.

 

[ViShawn]

A day in the life of an SRE at LinkedIn: http://engineering.linkedin.com/day-life/crash-course-linkedins-global-site-operations


Guide to Interviewing for Site Reliability Engineering at LinkedIn


The Role:

Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) at LinkedIn fill the mission-critical role of ensuring that our complex, web-scale systems are healthy, monitored, automated, and designed to scale.


Technical Interviews

You can expect questions that evaluate your skills in 5 primary areas.


1. Unix Internals

Know what happens under the hood.

Tip: Check out the book Stevens, Richard. Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment. 2013 Stevens


2. Network Infrastructure

Interviewers will be looking for an in depth knowledge and understanding of networking theory. Sample topics include the different protocols (TCP/IP, UDP, ICMP, etc…), MAC addresses, IP packets, DNS, OSI layers, and load balancing.


3. Systems Troubleshooting

Interviewers will be looking for a logical and structured approach to problem solving


4. Web Architecture

Candidates should understand what it means to operate services at scale in dynamic web environments. System design questions are meant to test your problem solving skills.

Tips: Make sure you explain your thought process. Explain and justify your assumptions. Ask qualifying questions.


5. Coding

This coding technical phone interview will test your ability to write programs in commonly used programming languages. You will be expected to write some programs in one of the following languages: Python, Perl, Ruby, PHP

Tips: While we're OK with other languages, the questions are time limited and overly verbose languages will handicap you. The tasks involved in these exercises will cover common operational needs with a particular focus on System Administration tasks. If you are out of practice you should brush up on file system processing, text parsing and basic language constructs like functions, loops and simple data structures.

 

[Black Cobain]

Alright brehs, for context:
-I'm 18 in a 3 year masonry program, but I want a back up just in case
-Always been paranoid about internet privacy and know the bare minimum about keeping myself "invisible"
-Doubt it'll help in IT but I have 2 certs already (1 in Adobe Flash, 1 in Adobe Illustrator)

So basically, would it be a good idea for a novice to start out in cyber security? If so where should I start? If not, what else would suit me?

I've signed up for Cybrary courses to get somewhat of an idea of what i'll be doing too.

 

[ViShawn]

Bombed my coding interview with LinkedIn but that was to be expected

I told the LinkedIn guy after the fizz buzz question that this is a gap in my knowledge I need to learn then I left the phone call

 

[se1f_made]

Bombed my coding interview with LinkedIn but that was to be expected

I told the LinkedIn guy after the fizz buzz question that this is a gap in my knowledge I need to learn then I left the phone call

You just abruptly dropped out of the phone interview?

 

[ViShawn]

You just abruptly dropped out of the phone interview?

No we parted lol. I wrote that wrong. We left the call together amicably

He told me that I could re take it again after I practice.

 

[GollyImGully]

Bombed my coding interview with LinkedIn but that was to be expected

I told the LinkedIn guy after the fizz buzz question that this is a gap in my knowledge I need to learn then I left the phone call

Did you get get some what close to the answer?

One way to do FizzBuzz in python if anyone is curious

for i in range(1,101):
if i % 15 == 0:
print("FizzBuzz")
elif i % 3 == 0:
print("Fizz")
elif i % 5 == 0:
print("Buzz")
else:
print(i)

 

[ViShawn]

Did you get get some what close to the answer?

One way to do FizzBuzz in python if anyone is curious

for i in range(1,101):
if i % 15 == 0:
print("FizzBuzz")
elif i % 3 == 0:
print("Fizz")
elif i % 5 == 0:
print("Buzz")
else:
print(i)

I did the Fizz Buzz correct. Me personally I didn't do use range. That's a cleaner way to do it instead of me doing number +=1 to iterate it over and over to 100.

The other one was regarding reading lines and parsing them



f = open('nginx.log', 'r')

file = f.readlines()
for line in file:
print file

length = len(file)
print length,' line(s) '
f.close()

I was doing this on there, but he also wanted me to parse and split the files, so clearly I'd use something like argparse for that. Also print the length of each line for him.

I'm just not as comfortable in writing in Python. I never felt I could write anything worthwhile in my Operations roles. Most of the time honestly I use bash for my tasks.

My goal in my previous SRE role was to do more of that, but I was only there less than a year. I did get a certification though so it wasn't all in vain.

 

[GollyImGully]

I did the Fizz Buzz correct. Me personally I didn't do use range. That's a cleaner way to do it instead of me doing number +=1 to iterate it over and over to 100.

The other one was regarding reading lines and parsing them



f = open('nginx.log', 'r')

file = f.readlines()
for line in file:
print file

length = len(file)
print length,' line(s) '
f.close()

I was doing this on there, but he also wanted me to parse and split the files, so clearly I'd use something like argparse for that. Also print the length of each line for him.

I'm just not as comfortable in writing in Python. I never felt I could write anything worthwhile in my Operations roles. Most of the time honestly I use bash for my tasks.

My goal in my previous SRE role was to do more of that, but I was only there less than a year. I did get a certification though so it wasn't all in vain.

Im been using python more to add on to my skill set to go with my networking

ive made simple shyt so far i wanna get to a point where i can automate mostly everything

 

[No Homo]

Did you get get some what close to the answer?

One way to do FizzBuzz in python if anyone is curious

for i in range(1,101):
if i % 15 == 0:
print("FizzBuzz")
elif i % 3 == 0:
print("Fizz")
elif i % 5 == 0:
print("Buzz")
else:
print(i)

I'm halfway through a python udemy and i somewhat actually understood this

 

[GollyImGully]

I'm halfway through a python udemy and i somewhat actually understood this

shyts dope I've been fukkign with it for about 2 months know and I got a pretty good feel for it

Didn't think I would like coding as much as I do

 

[ViShawn]

Im been using python more to add on to my skill set to go with my networking

ive made simple shyt so far i wanna get to a point where i can automate mostly everything

Breh if you are cracking those 80K jobs programming will get you FAR and get you in the door. It's a gap that is something that I'm missing. Luckily the varying degrees of the programming needed for the DevOps / Site Reliability Engineer roles ranges a lot. Typically if you are a strong systems guy and want to learn more programming they will help. My last role was like that. But there are many roles that I won't get because I don't have any programming experience, so good you're learning.

 

[bnm8907]

I got the 180 day free trial. It was from the Microsoft site

Did you virtualize on one computer?

The last few days I've been reading up on this and it seems to run a lab you need like like 4 computers or use vmware and set up everything. I want to get started learning but I feel like I don't have whats needed.

I know this sounds bad but I dont even have a 64bit computer which from what I've seen is the bare minimum to do all the virtualization you need. Is this true?

Also did you have a resource to walk you through the process of what you needed for your lab? I don't want to keep bothering you with questions.

 

[Ice_MF_Mike]

Did you virtualize on one computer?

The last few days I've been reading up on this and it seems to run a lab you need like like 4 computers or use vmware and set up everything. I want to get started learning but I feel like I don't have whats needed.

I know this sounds bad but I dont even have a 64bit computer which from what I've seen is the bare minimum to do all the virtualization you need. Is this true?

Also did you have a resource to walk you through the process of what you needed for your lab? I don't want to keep bothering you with questions.

That would be google. Thats part of learning. if you cant use google to figure out how to do things you havent done before, then you may be in trouble in IT. But when you suffer through a problem and figure it out and finally succeed in getting VMware up and running and creating VMs and setting up a domain... that is great experience.

 

[bnm8907]

That would be google. Thats part of learning. if you cant use google to figure out how to do things you havent done before, then you may be in trouble in IT. But when you suffer through a problem and figure it out and finally succeed in getting VMware up and running and creating VMs and setting up a domain... that is great experience.

I feel u. I guess i was looking to know if there was like a professor messor of the MSCA that I was missing. I know when I firat started my Comptia stuff I didn't know about him and it would have saved me a bunch of time if I had. But, since this is higher level its probably not like that. I just wanted to make sure.