These are actual exchanges from a technical interview I conduced recently. The person had 2 years experience in an MNC, in what they described as DevOps
Me: You have mentioned “Troubleshooting problems on unix platform. Which platforms have you worked on ?”
Candidate: Unix
Me: Which one ?
Candidate: SunOS. I think Solaris. It was UNIX.
Me: Why are you leaving this job ?
Candidate: I want to grow technically.
Me: What steps have you taken to do that.
Candidate: I learnt Django on my own. I created a small app. (Goes on to describe, album cover art, music file, songwriter etc.)
Me: Which database did you use ?
Candidate: SQL
Me: Which one ?
Candidate: NoSQL
Me: Which one ?
Candidate: I don't remember. I think it was mongodb.
Me: Did you have to use any plugin, or was it supported “out of the box” (From what I remember, Django ORM does not support NoSQL, hence the question)
Candidate: No plugin or extension
Me: …
Candidate: I don't remember.
Me: Can you explain kind of automation you did, as part of your job ?
Candidate: We have 100s of servers each with different authentication. We deploy via ansible playbooks. We do not store the username password in the playbook.
Me: Since you mentioned 100s of servers, where do you keep all the auth details ? (I expected them to say “Spreadsheet”)
Candidate: It is stored in git
Me: … (Wha….)
Me: Isn't this a security risk ?
Candidate: No, this repo has “read-only” permission.
Me: I hacker only needs to “read” the password, isn't it ?
Candidate: Only my team has access. Developers do not have access to this repo at all.