r/devops • u/MountainTruth6073 • 11d ago
Discussion Kubernetes interview gone really bad
I went to a kubernetes tech interview, expecting that they are going to ask me about my experience using kubernetes and some basic question or some system design about how I could possibly build a cluster some scratch but nop they end up asking me questions that I found it very difficult to answer from the top of my head:
- First warm up question was, Can you explain to me what it is Quorum?
- Next question, I guess it was a follow up question, Do you know what ETCD? What is the difference between ETCD and Redis?
- Next question, Given this CNI Flannel, Cilum and Calico, which one you will use and why?
- And the killer question that literally frozen me was explain to me under the hood what is happening when a user clicks a button to download a file.
As a Senior Kubernetes Engineer, it is realistic to know all this stuff from the top of my head? Does it makes sense?
I have the feeling that the interview was setting me to fail, I never have to have to memorize things in my career, I always have to understand and get into conclusion by reasoning. But this is the third interview where the interviewer expect me to know things by heart... I was in another interview where the interviewer asked me to name all of the type of kubernetes services and explain them, I forgot to mention the headless service which I never use in my life.
Maybe it is realistic, that is why I need to vent and have another point of view
2
u/jumpsCracks 11d ago
Yeah that's pretty typical.
With that said, I'm a working senior k8s/automation eng also, and I couldn't answer all of those questions very well. Don't feel too bad about it. I'm terrible with that kind of detail oriented information, but I pick it up quickly enough that it doesn't matter. For example, I've done the exact CNI comparison and presented the comparison to leadership, and I genuinely couldn't tell you the difference now.
HOWEVER if you're job searching you should definitely know all of that information. It's the kind of thing that always gets asked in interviews, and isn't terribly hard to study.