Conversation
sima@chaos.social

🐧sima🐧

I'm interviewing candidates for a kernel engineering manager position. they're really confused why they get interviewed by a kernel maintainer

they're even more confused after the interview is over, and I grilled them for an hour on people management challenges

feels a bit like a "no one ever expects the Spanish inquisition^W^W non-technical interview with a kernel maintainer" meme 🤣

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conor

Conor Dooley

Reply to @sima@chaos.social
@sima Could you explain why they're confused that a kernel maintainer is interviewing people for a management role of kernel engineers? To me that is very similar to having someone with a title like "technical fellow" being on the interview panel for an role managing engineers in their organisation.
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sima@chaos.social

🐧sima🐧

Reply to @conor

@conor it's more they expect a technical interview, and that's just not what I'm doing at all. for reasons I also happen to the be first screening interview, which I guess adds to the confusion

but yeah it's a bit baffling that they're so consistently confused

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conor

Conor Dooley

Reply to @sima@chaos.social
@sima Right. I would have thought that, given it's a "screening" interview, figuring out whether they understand the "culture" of upstream OSS projects (I guess with the assumption that upstream is involved) and how to deal with the various personalities and debates that are involved would be more important than their technical ability as an engineer.

I thought I should just chalk that up to having unrealistic expectations cos of my exposure to various upstream projects, but if you're looking for someone that's managing engineers working with those projects, it doesn't seem all that unrealistic after all...
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