Soft Skills

Question 1

Describe something you built and you are proud of….why…what…etc..

Answer 1

PERL automation framework at NetApp. And that led to the Crusher Test Bed and patent application

** Being Bold **

Question 2

How would you envision operating in a FB style environment?

Answer 2

Being creating and solving problems. Taking initiatives.

Question 3

How do you approach conflict? Disagreements you are personally having or seeing in others? Give example

Answer 3

I generally get along with co workers.

• Professionalism
• Open conversation.
• Try to give pros and cons.
• Try to be objective and use real data
• Resolve early on

Brent had a short term solution to assigning IPs to camera simulators. I had a long term solution scalable solution.

Question 4

Tell me about a decision you made, implemented, and later regretted. Why?

Answer 4

Most recently choosing the wrong solution for the Web UI I wrote.

Question 5

What is the type of person you find the most difficult to work with?

Answer 5

Someone who isn’t forthcoming with information. Not willing to mentor or help out other engineers.

Question 6

Tell me about a time when you didn’t have enough information to begin a task or project. How did you move forward?

Answer 6

No documentation when I started at Rapt. I had to go through the product and use it and learn everything about it.

Question 7

Tell me about a time when you needed to overcome external obstacles to complete a task.

Answer 7

Automation didn’t support volume creation for the platform I was testing. I had to work closely with the automation team to implement it quickly so I could complete the testing.

Question 8

Tell me about something that happened at work in the last year that made it a truly great day.

Answer 8

Demo’ing the BriefCam solution in front of engineering and the VP of engineering.

Question 9

Tell me about a time when you experienced failure in a project. What did you learn?

Answer 9

When I went through a performance run and completely missed some required settings for getting the best performance.

Question 10

Describe when you had to use your influence to change the outcome of a decision.

Answer 10

Convincing VP of Product at Rapt to buy TestRail

Question 11

What is your favorite task/type of work? Why?

Answer 11

Doing real work. Getting my hands dirty. Setting up equipment and solutions. Automating the setup or testing of the solution.

Question 12

If you could not work in this sector, what career would you pursue?

Answer 12

Woodworking. Construction. I love building stuff.

Question 13

In a team dynamic, what type of role do you tend to play (follow up to ask for examples).

Answer 13

Technical Lead. I usually lead the Jr QA engineers on my team. Give assignments. I manage the test plans, Agile stories. Ex. Netapp several examples, Pivot3 several examples

Question 14

What does impact mean to you?

Answer 14

Helping my team. training, mentoring,

** Focus on impact **

Question 15

How do you feel this role relates to the Facebook mission?

Answer 15

We can’t bring the world closer together if the Facebook employees have a difficult time getting their job done. What we do allows the employees to work more efficiently.

Question 16

What has been the most challenging episode in your career? Why?

Answer 16

Starting at Rapt with a brand new technology. But it was also very rewarding. I learned that challenges make me a better engineer.

** Move Fast **

Question 17

Why do you want to work at Facebook?

Answer 17

Member for over 11 years. Created neighborhood group, fantasy football group. Connect to friends and family.

Question 18

Describe your ideal day at work

Answer 18

Accomplishing a task.

Question 19

What is your understanding of Enterprise Engineering

Answer 19

At Facebook, it’s building custom product solutions tailored to the unique needs of Facebook. It’s our job to make Facebook employees work more efficiently and have a more connected experience at work.

Enterprise Engineering is looking for Systems Engineers. Our customers are Facebook’s employees, and we support the systems they rely on to keep the business growing and information safe. We use a combination of open source and off-the-shelf technologies, plus many of the tools developed to run facebook.com. You will be responsible for growing the Linux environment by solving configuration, authentication, and infrastructure problems at scale.

Question 20

Tell me about a disagreement or conflict between you and a coworker.

Answer 20

Disagreement about the supported modes of a GPU.

Question 21

What has been your most interesting bug so far?

Answer 21

Finding a performance issue when using a new GPU with BriefCam. It wasn’t performing as expected. I worked with BriefCam and we determined it wasn’t BriefCam Software. We then worked with Nvidia and determined it was the GPU driver that was at fault.

Question 22

Tell me about a time you had to think outside the box

Answer 22

Bug matrix for prioritizing bugs

Question 23

How do you work under pressure

Answer 23

• I work at a quicker pace.
• Keep a level head
• Handle tasks 1 at a time in a prioritized manner
• More pressure more reward

Question 24

When did you lead a team through a sticky situation?

Answer 24

When Pivot3 laid off a good portion of the company and changed direction of the company to focus on Surveillance. I volunteered to train all of engineering to get the team up to speed on that product line.

Question 25

Walk through your process of how you’d explain a complex topic to someone who was unfamiliar

Answer 25

• I’m visual so would like to give a demo or diagram if it’s technical in nature
• Try not to get dragged down in the details and give a high level summary
• Maybe provide analogies

Question 26

Can you tell me about a time when things didn’t go according to plan? How did you cope?

Answer 26

Testing on a new platform where I discovered thermal issues on the NIC. This delayed the release of the new platform. We had to get involved with the manufacture troubleshooting new shrouds and new NICs.
- Just identify the issue and takes steps to resolve it as quickly as possible.

Question 27

How to choose right automation framework

Answer 27

• Consider tests in same language as application and search for test frameworks in that language
• Is the framework well supported? Open Source?
• Do a Spike of different frameworks
• Make a choice as a team
• Determine license cost of the tool. What costs are associated with each framework?
• Consider the application and the technology involved. How was the application built? What is the user experience like?
• Think about testing requirements. Does the application have a very complex workflow?
• Evaluate the skill sets available within your organization. What skills does your team already have? Is there a team that could plug into one of the frameworks?

Question 28

Describe the greatest challenge in your last job and how you addressed it.

Answer 28

Pivot3
- Working with BriefCam and no support

Rapt Media
- Learning new technology

Question 29

Describe a situation in whichyou workedwith someonewithwhomyou didn’t get along.

Answer 29

• I can usually get along with anyone…at least professionally.
• A guy on the team that doesn’t share knowledge and reluctant to show how to do something

Question 30

Tell me about a time that you exhibited leadership qualities.

Answer 30

Air Force: Gave training classes on Perl
NetApp: Mentoring and leading junior QA engineers on my team. Helping them write test plans and test cases.
Pivot3: Training and presentations

Question 31

can you paint me a picture of the role you’d leave your current position for?

Answer 31

A role that allows me to grow and learn new things and new technologies. Let’s me think out of the box to solve problems for customers.