Dell Interview - Help!!!

[ZokesPro]

Interviews are interviews, I had the BEST interview ever and I didn't get the job! Go figure.

[BuddMan]

Well, I got an email from Dell....

Says to expect a call either this afternoon or tomorrow. Jesus...why can't they just say I either got the job or I don't got it.

[Gurm]

The sad thing?

You will be given a book.

You will read solutions from the book.

You will NEVER be allowed to deviate from those solutions, so all the grilling you about technical stuff is totally bizarre.

None of this stuff is even on exams like A+ certification (mostly legacy stuff and basic DOS/Windows troubleshooting) or MCSE (mostly Windows configuration stuff). Some of that stuff is the sort of thing that even experience hardware techs are pretty iffy on - and we tend to get paid more than $14/hr!

At any rate, to answer a couple earlier questions...

1. Fat32 vs. Fat16 - block size, partition size and long filenames. That's pretty much it. A few other really technical goodies, but the ability for the block size to be MUCH smaller than fat16 (4k vs. FAT16's 32k) is the primary improvement... that and the ability to have really huge partitions (FAT16 was limited to 2GB).

2. NTFS... it's a strange mystery. Many have unraveled it though. Symantec supports it with Ghost (from DOS, no less!) and Disc Doctor / Speed Disk. SysInternals has written NTFS98 and NTFSDos. And all those defragger writers have it down pat. Oh, and Powerquest has it licked. Better than MS themselves. The primary difference between NTFS and FAT is that NTFS is what we CS geeks call a "real" OS. It has a degree of journaling (i.e. keeps track of file operations to allow for better self-repair mechanisms), real file permissions (good luck getting at files if they're properly locked down, without physically removing the drive to a different system), compression (in recent versions) and a cluster size as small as 512 bytes.

Hope some of that helps, I know you already had the interview...

- Gurm

[BuddMan]

Well, no call today, so I guess I'm waiting until tomorrow.

[BuddMan]

AGGGHHHHH.....

I just found out I won't get the job because I'll be going to school in the Fall. After all that time. They could have told me that from the start damn it. Now I just waisted two weeks.

[The PIT]

Eh what? You just a school kiddo??? You're under the age of work???

[BuddMan]

College...

[ZokesPro]

Originally posted by Gurm
The sad thing?

You will be given a book.

You will read solutions from the book.

You will NEVER be allowed to deviate from those solutions, so all the grilling you about technical stuff is totally bizarre.

- Gurm

Yup that is 100% true. No matter what you know to be "real" knowledge, you always have to follow their steps wether or not they will work.

[BuddMan]

Well, it doesn't matter now. I can't believe they waisted two weeks of my time though. They could have told me at the beginning that college would pose a problem for them on hiring me. They basically said they would hire me otherwise and even asked if I was considering quiting this fall semester. Of course I had to say no (I dunno, I could have lied) because I will be taking classes. So Dell is out of the question until I get out of college, which by then will be way too late (I have 6 more years to go)....

So now I have to play the searching game again. *Sigh*

[ZokesPro]

Originally posted by BuddMan
Well, it doesn't matter now. I can't believe they waisted two weeks of my time though. They could have told me at the beginning that college would pose a problem for them on hiring me. They basically said they would hire me otherwise and even asked if I was considering quiting this fall semester. Of course I had to say no (I dunno, I could have lied) because I will be taking classes. So Dell is out of the question until I get out of college, which by then will be way too late (I have 6 more years to go)....

So now I have to play the searching game again. *Sigh*

Sorry to hear about it dude, at least you know you have the stuff to get in. Maybe it's for the better, if you know what I mean. Sometimes working for a HUGE faceless corp. can sucks much ass!