1. Can you tell me a little about yourself? （how you fit hte job , relevant)
I joined supermicro as a network validation engineer for almost 3 years ,starting as a fresh , I have leart a lot there, from OS and application installation and switch configuration to netwrok analyzing and troubleshooting , meanwhile during these time, I have studied myself to achieve the CCNA and CCNP certificate.
in the position, I am responsible for compatible ,stress or performance testing and analyze between different switches and servers,collerating with the TS team and RD team to deal with the customer issues.
I'am passionate about learning and applying new skills and I also like to collaberate with other to build smarter, more meaningful solutions , for example , recently I assisted our team to develop the automation system to perform complete and trusted testing for every switches and servers automatically ,in this way, lots of time has been saved and the testing quality is improved as well.
I believe the knowledge and industrial experience gained in my current company has prepared me to take the next step in my career, which is to deal with large scale of network to make great impact and build real value for people's life, and FB is the idealest comany I want to join. I believe that this can further improve myself and at the same time I will be able to contribute to the company to achieve the goal to bring people closer.
2.why facebook ？
first of all ,I'm always the huge fan of facebook,when I first come to American, the first social media account I have is FB, I connect with friends not only in USA ,but also those in China and Europe which is all around the world. I'm very appreciated that FB has changed our life and getting us closer, we can share our moments ,memories,and waht matters most with our friends and family.
another thing I admire about facebook is that with the belief that a more open world is a better world, you always glad to share the open source with public since people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. like I know you launched the Open Compute Project (OCP) to make the harware also be open source as the software.and it is als overy cool to invite others to collectively develop the most efficient computing infrastructure.
and I also like the culture that fb empower their employee to
then as a network negineer, facebook is definitely my dream company, facebook's network is one of the most dynamic and face-paced network in the world, and is the carrier of the connection between billions of users. the network operations and technologys are very attractive to me , it would be very inspiring to combine the network skills gained before with what will learn to contribute to the network to make greater impact .I'm eager to be part of you to fullfill the mission to bring the world closer together.
3. What is your most Challenging project ? What is your greatest professional achievement?
the most challenge project I have ever had is building the automation testing system to perform complete and trusted testing for every switches and servers automatically. it is still an ongoing project.
our lab used to test the function of device manully which would takes long time and it 's also a repeat work. then last year ,one of our senior engineer decide to build this automation system , I was glad to be assigned to assist him to fullfill this project.
I was assigned to design some test cases and integrate all the code to single source since different switch may have differnt CLI.
I had trouble even at begining to understanding the framwork and software architecture which is new to me, I have consulted the senior engineer several time and take note to digest,The automation system is designed as a client-server structure to provide multiple testing services.Client owns the submission file which is to call the plugin and submits it to server. It controls the test procedure. the Server performs testing at the backend and listens to the request from client and then generate the final report back to the client. with the knowledge be clear, I think i would get into more trouble if I run the function test first, i must ensure all the environment and topology are set up in the right way. I first ran a simple hello world test submission file to see whether all the paeameter in the file is right, after serval time of attempt , the system works finally , then I started to modify the plugin file to add more test cases and integrate the testcases of different switch base into , it was kind of slow at first, since there are bunch of commands and they are different in different switches, I takes steps to manually try on each switch and try to transfer them into single code, but after several test cases, everything become fluent.Generally as an engineer , I always have a mindset that nothing’s going to beat me. If there’s something happening that I don’t understand first what I should do is just keep trying until you solve the problem.
now ,we have already covered almost all the layer 2 functions of all the switch modules , It have saved lots of time , we can run hundreds of test cases everyday, and I have learnt a lot from the project.
4. Describe a situation where you exceeded expectations/did more than required?
last mouth , there comes in a customer tickets that the blade server's interface will be down with some configuration.
I have duplicated all the environment as the customers like the same enclosure, same switch configuration, same CMM or IPMI version as soon as possible , but didn't see the link down as the customer. So the TS team has to go back to the customer to remote login their server to do some troubleshooting.
I am always ask myself to finish the assignment head of the deadline because in that way I think I can spare time to think more about how to improve the project , how to help others to achieve the goal .
So for this time , to exclude the possibility that it was the issue of set up of blade server, I wrote a script to assign the ip to different four ports and flap the interface for more than 100 times to see whether there is a failure of the interface
with the result I gave , the TS team quickly started to look into other aspect to solve the problem.
5. Have you ever had a conflict with the team? How was it resolved? Tell me about a challenge or conflict you've faced at work, and how you dealt with it.(ominipath)
Conflict is inevitable in our daily work and isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. I believe healthy and constructive conflict is a component of high-functioning teams.
Conflict arises from different viewponts of people , if we understand and appreciate thie various viewpoint and maintain a healthy balance of constructive difference of opinion ,we can try to find ways to transfer conflict into collaboration to work together to figure out the solutions.
one time ,I took over a project from others who just left, the project is new to me since I have never involved in the meeting or the email disscussion, once I was confused with the one test result and asked my manager fro help , he did not either, so I posted the issue and send the email to the PM and HW engineer to verify ,the PM is kind of push and blame me for why I asking this questions since he has already emphasized serval times .
I understand his purpose is to make the project release smmothly ,so am I , to work as a team ,we should keep open to communicate and clarify the situation, so I email him and list what I have tested and what I understand right now and clarify why I have the confuse and asked for the meeting minutes they used to have discussed on this theme, the PM reply with the email more gental and speicify the different chip set situation, we come to the agreement and with the information he gave , I finished the test on time.
once I was involved in a switch release project which need to collaborate with the hardware engineer ,I was in charge of the performance test and ask to hw engineer to change the epprom when there was some issue.
the project's deadline is close, and the PM gave pressure to us , I did not got response from the hw engineer for some time after sending several emails ,I was still chosen to be ignored, so I approached him about the issue, he is kind of in a mood and blame me not report the issue earlier ,I was taken aback by his response , but I remained clam, I asked him to get a coffee during lunch time , sometimes informer way is more comfortable to communicate, during the time I told him that the deadline was tight, and I was trying to fulfill the test head of deadline ,we could not expected when the issue would occur, and asked him whether I can do sth to support him or work together to have a solution.
His attitude was much better and He told me about all of his other competing projects and how overwhelmed he was. Then we discussed whether there’s a way to overcome this situation. Eventually, we agreed that it would help if his manager had a better understanding of how important this project was. We decided we would speak with him together. She ended up assigning some of his other projects to another engineer , which took some of the pressure off of him.
and as a result ,we cooperate together and make the deadline on time.
6. What do you consider to be your weaknesses?
Honestly, I would say that public speaking is an area that I could work on. I tend to get nervous when asked to present to a large group of people. In small team meetings, I’m fine to stand up and present. But put me in front of a big group and I can get flustered.
I actually spoke to my manager about this and we set it as one of my development goals for this year. I attended some meetings of Toastmasters, a networking group for people who want to practice public speaking. With some practice, I started to feel more comfortable. Last month, I even volunteered to represent our team to introduce other team what is our team's work. I was still kind of nervous at first but soon I clam down and I did it ! It was actually kind of fun, so I plan on continuing to seek out opportunities to improve in this area.
7.What do you like least about your previous job? What do you wish you had done differently at your previous company?
firstly, I have learnt a lot from the previous job, As a new employee in the working world, the company offered me a great opportunity for a good entry level position – one that I’ll always be grateful for. It is the first time I applied what learn from the book into practice, However, after being there for years, I felt I was not able to reach my full potential since I felt I was not challenged enough at the job. and the career path growth is kind of limited. I have learn myself about knowledge such as BGP, MPLS and so on which is rarely used in my daily work. I am desiring to learn more updated technology and achieve the self-worth by joining the work which can help others and impact other people's life.
what is your worst (failure) project ?
As the validation engineer, you always assign several tasks the same period , in the early after I joined the company, the first time I was assigned with three test with deadline in the same week.I have had problems with taking on too many tasks and then not delivering on time.I was simply stretched too thin in too many areas with not enough time to deliver in a quality manner. even though I tried my best ,however i stilled missed a dealine.
I then talked with some senior people to ask them for advice for how to deal with the conflict of arrangement of several tasks, I've learned that I'm not at my best when I have too many conflicting priorities.I must prioritize their focus and cut back on some of the less important one .
after that time , I tried to plan and monitor the project progress and set the priority of different tasks to deal with, and all the project were delivered with high quality and in time.
I don’t think any project I’ve ever been involved in has been a true failure, yes we’ve had some tough times ,However we always make sure that we capture the lessons of any failure to ensure that we never repeat them in the future, this helps us to continually improve the things we do.
8. Do you have any questions for us?
What do you want to know about the position? The company? The department? The team?
What's your favorite part about working here?"
“What can you tell me about your new products or plans for growth?"
can you tell the route of this job every day?
so for the rotational program , is it a new program ? what makes you to create a program like this ?
since this is a program enroll in three different teams in one year, what is expected to learn in each team ? what will be the daily route to each role ? what characters is thought as the best fit for this program ? quick learning, eager study mind or sth else ?
what will be the career path for after the first year ?
can you talk about the company culture a little bit
你能给我讲讲在这个职位上大概每一天hour by hour都干点什么？你觉得team现在面临的挑战是什么？你在这个职位上有没有面临过什么挑战？你是怎么解决的？公司未来3-5年会往哪个方向走？我大概什么时候可以得到公司的回复？
9. How do you deal with pressure or stressful situations?
Pressure is very important to me. Good pressure, such as having a lot of assignments to work on, or an upcoming deadline, helps me to stay motivated and productive. Of course, there are times when too much pressure can lead to stress; however, I am very skilled at balancing multiple projects and meeting deadlines, which prevents me from feeling stressed often.
For example, I once had a new release switch project along with two other performance test due in the same week, which was a lot of pressure. However, since I have created a schedule that detailed how I would break down each project into small assignments,and I realized that running two stress test same time can save my time, so I turned to my cowork to see whether he is free to help me run one of the sress test while I was running another one,and he was very gerous to give me a hand.
and In the end I completed all the tasks in time and avoided unnecessary stress.
15 .Where do you see yourself in five years?
I see myself working within this networking field, but I hope to have progressed to a higher level of responsibility, possess a greater degree of knowledge and advance and expand my skill set. I always want to keep learning, keep getting better, and I hope after five years my efforts will carry me closer and closer to becoming an expert at what I do. That being said, I'm also committed to staying happy and fulfilled with my career so that, too, factors into my five-year plans.
12. Why are you leaving your current job?
One of the reasons I am leaving is that I felt I was not challenged enough at the job. As a new employee in the working world, the company offered me a great opportunity for a good entry level position – one that I’ll always be grateful for. However, after being there for years, I felt I was not able to reach my full potential because of a real lack of challenge. There really was no room for improvement as a test engineer in the company. While I did enjoy working there and appreciate the skills I developed while with the company, I have learn more knowledge by myself such as BGP, MPLS and so on , I feel my skill set can be better utilized elsewhere, where my capabilities are more recognized and there is the opportunity for growth.
11. What's your dream job?
the network engineer who can apply thier technical skills to build robust network for others is an ideal placement for me right now. Of course, I know I have lots of learning to do before I can achieve my dream job. but I believe this job will put me on that path,since I can learn a lot from different teams which is building one of the most dynamic and fast paced network in the world