meta | Software Engineer | Interview Experience
Interview Date: Not specified
Result: Not specified
Difficulty: Not specified
Interview Process
The interview was conducted via technical phone screening. The candidate was presented with a scenario involving domain access issues in a user report application. The process started by identifying whether the problem was isolated to a single data center. The candidate was asked to examine the load balancer logic for that data center and to determine at which step the request was failing.
Eventually, it was found that the Nginx server at layer 7 had no logs. The candidate was prompted to check the Nginx status on the host, where they discovered that Nginx was running with a “permission denied” error. The candidate was then asked how to troubleshoot this issue and what steps to take if they found that the Nginx binary file was missing executable permissions. They discussed potential solutions, including using chmod, but noted that they also lacked the necessary permissions to execute that command. The interview allowed for open-ended responses, and the candidate felt comfortable asking the interviewer for hints when they encountered roadblocks.
Technical Questions
- System Troubleshooting (System Design, Troubleshooting, Network Issues, Permission Management)
Tips & Insights
The candidate noted that it was helpful to ask for hints when stuck, and overall felt that the interview process was reasonable and well-structured.