• TheFogan@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    ·
    3 days ago

    on a job interview in IT, an interviewer asked me if I understood the difference between TCP and UDP. After giving the best technical explanation I could, I ended with

    I could tell you a UDP joke, but I’m not sure if you’d get it.

    He said go ahead

    I paused, that was it.

    Kind of awkward.

    I didn’t get the job.

        • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          8
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          3 days ago

          Interviewing is (ideally) quite a structured type of conversation, when is a job interview. A lot of people have to lock in pretty hard to deal with how unnatural it is, and they might not have the spare bandwidth to catch a joke.

          Especially not someone from HR, they’re fucking troglodytes.

            • MSBBritain@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              3 days ago

              Oh I’ve seen some pretty bad interviewing, where HR is sent in with a question sheet and a box to tick for which key words the interviewee mentioned per question.

              Obviously a red flag and useless method of interviewing, but it does happen frighteningly often. Especially where the IT team is so understaffed, they can’t spare the time to do interviews.

              • SwampYankee@feddit.online
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                2 days ago

                This is done, especially in government work, to limit bias in the interview process. Ideally, though, the people conducting the interviews understand the questions they’re asking and can use some judgement and give credit if someone explained a concept but didn’t hit the specific keyword.

            • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@feddit.uk
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 days ago

              Well sure, but the context for my comment was the unnatural-ness of a structured job interview. If you’re not just pantsing it, such interviews follow a script, and that’s not how we normally talk to each other.

      • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        2 days ago

        Yeah, but that’s not what this was.

        Interview asked about thing then does not get joke about most basic property of thing. Either the interviewer is incredibly incompetent or incapable of getting a joke.

        It’s a weird situation even for a job interview.

        • TheFogan@programming.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          2 days ago

          I mean I think he got it after a few seconds, he did laugh, and then comment how everything was so serious before then and it took him a bit to get it. I don’t think that was why I didn’t get the job.

        • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          6
          ·
          2 days ago

          Humour is not universal, and cracking jokes in an interview is high risk no reward. I’ve rejected candidates that made inappropriate jokes before. Intentions don’t really matter, there’s 10 more candidates.

          • hessenjunge@discuss.tchncs.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            2 days ago

            Why do you keep moving the goal posts? We’re not talking about inappropriate jokes or someone being an ass during an interview. Honestly, if an interviewer wastes my time like this I’m ending the interview. Good luck finding just one more guy matching my talents.

            • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              2
              ·
              2 days ago

              I didn’t move to goal post at all. In any interaction, you need to gauge the vibe before moving to the next level. Workplace humour is sensitive, and you should drop a joke you’re not confortable not landing.

          • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 days ago

            Interviews are also (if not primarily) a measure of cultural fit. Making tasteful jokes is absolutely appropriate, but depends on the culture. I wouldn’t want to work at a place that is too uptight for some humor.

            The UDP joke isn’t one that I’d probably use, but doesn’t feel out of place in the context of detailing the protocol.

    • zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      2 days ago

      I asked someone this same question in an interview, not so much that it was important, but to see if they had general basic networking knowledge like they claimed to on their resume. Their highly confident explanation was “TCP is for sending, UDP is for receiving” They did not get the job, though not just because of that.

      • TheFogan@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        2 days ago

        Yeah I believe i remember roughly the explanation I gave to the interviewer.

        TCP basically takes the time to confirm every detail actually was recieved, used in almost all situations in networking where accuracy is critical.

        UDP is basically when speed is the more important than everything being perfect, (we were on a zoom call), Like say this video call, if the background gets blurry or a few frames drop or even my face distorts for a few seconds, that would be less of an inconvenience to us than if the network took the time and made sure to transmit every frame exactly as the camera picks it up, at the cost of an extra 10 seconds of lag in the call.

      • Baguette@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        3 days ago

        Tcp and udp are to sum it up, internet messaging protocols. UDP specifically is when you send a message over without guaranteeing your message was received. TCP on the otherhand is more like a handshake where you send a message and expect a response back.

        The joke is basically UDP=I dont know if you would get it

      • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 days ago

        There’s pretty basic UDP, that sends without confirming receiving. And instead of fixing it, they just slapped another protocol, TCP, on top of it.

        With only UDP, you don’t know, if you get it.

  • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    2 days ago

    For the life of me I can’t remember how we got to the subject, but once we were talking about attaching speakers to a dog and I called it “Dolby Surround Hound.” I was very proud of that one and it went completely unacknowledged.

  • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    2 days ago

    it’s worse if they then continue with. “ok, well, it’s interesting you said that his name rings a bell because the experiment…” like you’re too dumb to have even made the joke you did.

  • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    2 days ago

    I would have said “wasn’t Pavlov the guy who had a dog named Ruby Begonia?” and even the prof wouldn’t have known what the fuck I was talking about.

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        2 days ago

        FWIW I used to hang out with behavioral psychology grad students, who were in the Skinnerian tradition of operant conditioning research. They mostly worked with pigeons, and to transport the birds they used juice pitchers with a few air holes cut into the bottom. I asked them once how they got the birds into the pitchers and they laughed and showed me: they would just open the bird’s cage and hold the pitcher up and the birds would dive head-first into the pitcher, sometimes knocking themselves out in the process.

        As part of the research protocol, the birds were kept on a diet that included about 80% of their normal caloric intake; the rest of their food was provided by the reinforcements of the experiments themselves (this was done to maximize the reinforcement effect of the rewards). So those birds were way the fuck into those experiments. To add to that, these students were all behavioral pharmacologists, so in addition to getting food reinforcement the birds were also getting drugs like cocaine and heroin.

        BTW a lot of people confuse the operant conditioning research with the people who put animals into cages and shock them. This is definitely not what BF Skinner was all about. In fact he wrote books on the subject of how punishment is a bad thing for all animals (including humans and pigeons).

        • captcha@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, I though about pigeons and Skinner when writing that, but did not have much info about how it goes really. Thanks for sharing, that’s an interesting read, and nice to know they are treated well

      • Arigion@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 days ago

        Since Pavlow is so famous you see often the dogs depicted as cute and someone ringing a bell. Not as fixated pepsin machines. At least in the past that was my mental image. Might be a me problem.

  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    3 days ago

    No one laughed, I’m too witty for this class.

    Given how the cookie crumbles in plenty unis, odds are most of the class didn’t even know about the experiments, so they didn’t know enough to even notice the wit.

    • Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      3 days ago

      Well, they are there to learn after all, he didn’t assume his students knew, and asked if they did. One guy in the class knew. Seems like it’s working itself out, and he just needs to keep that one loaded for later in the semester when people are primed to get it.

      • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        3 days ago

        That’s fair, you’re right. I guess my comment was a bit too bitter.

        I always expected people starting a uni course to at least know the very basics of the subject. You know, out of interest. For psychology it would be the basics of Freud (something dreams, id/ego/superego), Pavlov and Skinner (experiments with other animals, focus on behaviour instead of “mind”), Piaget (child development) etc.

        But then your comment made me remember psychology classes are rather common for people from other graduations, specially when they’ll become teachers or professors.

  • FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 days ago

    I’ve found that everyone at uni is like this. Humourless weirdosfellows, maybe they just exhaust themselves with drink, drugs and dancing every night and can’t process my jokes.