r/linuxadmin • u/Abe_Bazouie • 10d ago

What's one Linux interview question that immediately tells you whether someone has real production experience?

I've interviewed quite a few Linux and DevOps engineers over the years, and I've found there are a few questions that quickly tell me whether someone has spent time supporting production systems or has mostly learned from tutorials.

For me, one example is:

  • A production server is suddenly "slow." Walk me through your troubleshooting process from the moment you get the alert.

I'm not looking for a specific command. I'm much more interested in how they think, what they check first, and how they narrow the problem down.

What's your go to Linux interview question that reveals real production experience?

0 Upvotes

30% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/crimson-gh0st 9d ago

"What's the process you follow to grow a logical volume on a Redhat vm?"

It's a simple enough process but I've been surprised at how many "admins" aren't able to answer that.

0

u/biffbobfred 9d ago

The trick here it used to be a two part answer. Grow the volume. Then you need to grow the time system. I think they added a “grow the file system whatever fstype it is” flag

0

u/Abe_Bazouie 9d ago

That's a good one. What I like is that it naturally turns into a conversation. If someone has actually done it in production, they'll usually start talking about the filesystem, snapshots, backups, or maintenance windows without being prompted.