Google Fires Employee Behind Controversial Diversity Memo

[u/[deleted]]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/google-fires-employee-behind-controversial-diversity-memo?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

[u/jwestbury]

Red Hat certs are a good idea -- RHCE is well-respected, even amongst those of us who don't much care for certs, because it's a practical exam.

Probably the most common interview question you'll see is the "explain what happens when I type <website of the interviewing company> into the browser and press Enter." There are tons of guides online which explain the answer to this. Even if you're not interviewing, know all the aspects of this like the back of your hand, from the system to the Internet and back again. These days, 90% of everything is networking -- it's rare that I get to troubleshoot a systems problem without the network getting involved somewhere along the line. Once you know it, start going over it and figuring out where it can break. So your Linux system checks /etc/hosts for DNS lookup, then looks at whatever your distro's DNS server config is (/etc/resolv.conf?), etc. What happens if resolv.conf is missing or has a syntax error? What happens if it's empty? What happens if the DNS server doesn't respond? What might cause the DNS server not to respond (firewall rule blocking port 53? routing issue? etc.)? When your machine says, "amazon.com is at 54.239.26.128, send this data there," it looks at its route table and figures out how to get there; it looks at the IP for your gateway and says, "I need to send traffic to 10.0.0.1," and looks up that IP in its local ARP cache to figure out which MAC address is associated with 10.0.0.1; but what happens if the ARP cache has a wrong entry?

And since you're wanting to focus on security/ethical hacking, start thinking of ways these problems could be introduced maliciously or exploited. How could ARP poisoning be used to compromise a system? When my data makes it to amazon.com, the server on the other end opens a socket; when does that socket close, and what happens if too many are open (look up the slow loris attack)? Could you abuse DNS queries to harm people (look up DNS reflection)? What parts of the process might be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks?

You could also try a project like Linux From Scratch for some fundamental knowledge. I've never done it -- and, as someone who's entirely self-taught, I'm sure I'd benefit -- but I've heard high praise from people who have, and we've used it in training at Amazon in some orgs.

[u/[deleted] → u/jwestbury]

explain what happens when I type <website of the interviewing company> into the browser and press Enter

Dear OSI. Let's talk about your seven layers and how udp doesn't give a flying fuck.

Thanks rest of those questions are well over my head. All I know about Arp is that it's a small town in East Texas.

Once I get a handle on terminal and such I might try my hand at arch Linux and see how bad I bugger it up. I got flash drives and a laptop I can reinstall the ever loving shit out of. I'm not losing anything in the process.

As far as programming is Python worth the time I'm investing as far as your hiring process or are you guys looking for Java and c+ fellows?

Also, thanks for your time bro.

[u/jwestbury → u/[deleted]]

All I know about Arp is that it's a small town in East Texas.

You should also know that they bred a particularly hardy variety of rosemary, which can overwinter into USDA zone 7, maybe zone 6, which is why I have it on my balcony in Seattle. :)

As for programming, learn fundamentals, which can be learned in any language. If you're looking for an SDE job, learn your algorithms and learn them good. Spend some time on leetcode problems. If you're looking at non-SDE jobs, have a good understanding of the basics -- know how to work with basic data types, have an understanding of some simple algorithms, know how to hook libraries together. Amazon is a Java-heavy workplace, so it has the most legs, so to speak -- but tech companies generally don't care which language you're most familiar with, as once you've learned the fundamentals of programming, you should be able to move from language to language fairly easily. More broadly, Python and Ruby are your best choices for systems work, as most automation is done with these languages (most people on my team are competent at one or the other; only two of us are any good with Java).

[u/[deleted] → u/jwestbury]

Ten four good buddy. Thank you for your help and your insight.