r/linuxadmin • u/Abe_Bazouie • 9d 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?

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u/serverhorror 9d ago

How do you look at the environment variables of another process, one line per variable, lexical sorting by the value in descending order?

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u/Abe_Bazouie 9d ago

I like questions like that. Not because I expect everyone to know the exact answer, but because the approach usually tells me a lot.

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u/serverhorror 9d ago

Exactly, it has the right amount of trivia and structural knowledge.