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Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

(www.gwan.com)
1764 points fatihky | 2 comments | 13 Oct 16 15:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
1. geofft ◴[13 Oct 16 16:52 UTC] No.12702130[source]▶
7. what is the name of the KILL signal?

Me: SIGKILL which #define is set to 9.

Recruiter: no, it's "TERMINATE".

Me: SIGTERM (15) is different from the KILL signal (9).

Recruiter: that's not the answer I have on my sheet of paper.

You know, I think I've been asked this question on a Google phone screen - and I think the question is specifically "What is the signal that the `kill` command sends?". The answer is in fact SIGTERM, not SIGKILL; if you want SIGKILL you need to specifically say `kill -KILL` or `kill -9`. If you insist that it's SIGKILL, you're just technically wrong. And if you can't understand the question, you're missing very important skills; this sort of confusion will cause actual production problems.

replies(1): >>12702761 #
2. gcp ◴[13 Oct 16 18:07 UTC] No.12702761[source]▶
Good catch, and a good indication that the author is paraphrasing and not exactly getting all the details right.

(I don't doubt this happened, but we're only hearing one side of the story)