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Comment by treatmesubj | Hacker News Reader

Is the guy's response really that far off?

Each router checks its table for the destination, and if it doesn't know it, queries the next upstream router, its default route, the next hop. Each router likely ultimately informs you of the hand-off via a packet of some sort, and your then traceroute sends a ping/ICMP to each hop to learn how far away they are.

He maybe could've been pushed to expand on what he did know in more detail, but it seems like she just threw out SNMP as misleading bait, and he maybe mixed up ICMP and SNMP. She is right to call herself a troll, but wow, that's crazy to say she caught the guy in a lie of insanity.

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The stepwise increasing TTL is the fundamental mechanism that makes traceroute work. Any answer that omits this is so vacuously incomplete that it might as well be considered wrong.

fair enough, I guess the TTL exceeded response is how you learn about each hop

Is the guy's response really that far off?

When you think about it, the candidate isn't even that wrong. Back then, at university, a certain professor would explain the oral exam to the candidate at the beginning. He would explain that he would incrementally increase the difficulty and skip from area to area. The goal would be to find the limits of the student's knowledge, the student would walk away feeling terrible, and he, the professor, didn't enjoy the experience.

That's how it ought to be, but here? OK, candidate doesn't know ICMP well, next topic, no need to waste time and dig in.

Here's another unfavourable thought: some people with abusive childhoods react very badly to dominance displays, and here is Rachel engaging in just that. One wonders what had happened before.

Downvoted for jumping from legitimate criticism of her interview methodology to very personal and completely baseless accusations. This is not the internet I want to live in.

This is not the internet I want to live in

Storytime! In a previous workplace a disagreement over fire safety with escalated into uncalled-for and unwelcome dominance behaviour from my supervisor. All attempts to deescalate were rebuffed, and now there is litigation from multiple plaintiffs, this person took out her sociopathic tendencies on many people. With a minimum of professional detachment or a HR department with a clue the peace would have been kept. (Yes, a few months later the fire marshal issued a code violation, as predicted.) You may not wish to live in that internet, but we live in a world where sociopaths are overrepresented in leadership positions.

Something rubs me here just the wrong way. Rachel complains about ageism and contempt for women in tech, and with good reason, and then she takes it out on an overenthusiastic candidate who can't read the room.

I wasn't denying the existence of antisocial people, I was decrying the public shaming of someone you've never met as a victim of child abuse, and now also as a sociopath, based on only a small thing they wrote on the internet.

I assure you, I've met many people who treat their interviewees worse who are not sociopaths.

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