I think there are multiple things wrong with the original question:
- It's unclear what they're trying to judge. Do they want to know if someone understands filesystems on an intimate level? Do they want to know if someone knows how hardlinks work? Do they want to know if someone knows what fstat returns? Are they trying to trick someone since an inode in many contexts is just a number? This is an unnecessary level of uncertainty for a question and encourages random tangents which may not be the answer the interviewer is looking for or cares about.
- Someone who has studied google's standard questions which this apparently may be one of [1] would be able to answer this without understanding the implications, what does that tell you about the candidate?
- If you want the candidate to go into a tangent about filesystems in order to figure out how well they understand them, this is as mentioned before a really stupidly open ended question.
- If someone did understand you were talking about inodes, they may be of the opinion that the inode contains a reference to the file's contents and as such contains the file contents. In the case of a directory this means that an inode "contains" the file names of files in that directory. This makes the question a leading question which is trying to lead to what would be a wrong answer from that person's point of view. How do you answer a leading question when you disagree with what it's trying to lead you to?
If you want to determine if someone understands filesystems on an intimate level. I think my question would be far better at elucidating that.
If you want to understand if someone knows how hardlinks work, I can't come up with a question off the top of my head but I doubt that "what is not in an inode" is anywhere close to the best one.
If you want to trick someone, go ahead, this is a good question. Likewise if you want to screen for people who have googled "Google SRE Interview Questions" and memorised the answers.
I've spoken to someone who interviewed for an SRE position and she said the questions were very similar to an early phone interview she had. She said the interviewer did not know what they were talking about and were just going off an answer sheet. So I don't think the interview in this case is representative of one for a Director of Engineering but is representative of an early screening interview for SRE. In which case anything BUT the expected answer to the question "What is not in an inode" would be considered incorrect.
- It's unclear what they're trying to judge. Do they want to know if someone understands filesystems on an intimate level? Do they want to know if someone knows how hardlinks work? Do they want to know if someone knows what fstat returns? Are they trying to trick someone since an inode in many contexts is just a number? This is an unnecessary level of uncertainty for a question and encourages random tangents which may not be the answer the interviewer is looking for or cares about.
- Someone who has studied google's standard questions which this apparently may be one of [1] would be able to answer this without understanding the implications, what does that tell you about the candidate?
- If you want the candidate to go into a tangent about filesystems in order to figure out how well they understand them, this is as mentioned before a really stupidly open ended question.
- If someone did understand you were talking about inodes, they may be of the opinion that the inode contains a reference to the file's contents and as such contains the file contents. In the case of a directory this means that an inode "contains" the file names of files in that directory. This makes the question a leading question which is trying to lead to what would be a wrong answer from that person's point of view. How do you answer a leading question when you disagree with what it's trying to lead you to?
If you want to determine if someone understands filesystems on an intimate level. I think my question would be far better at elucidating that.
If you want to understand if someone knows how hardlinks work, I can't come up with a question off the top of my head but I doubt that "what is not in an inode" is anywhere close to the best one.
If you want to trick someone, go ahead, this is a good question. Likewise if you want to screen for people who have googled "Google SRE Interview Questions" and memorised the answers.
[1] http://www.gwan.com/blog/20160405.html ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12701272 )
Regarding the above reference:
I've spoken to someone who interviewed for an SRE position and she said the questions were very similar to an early phone interview she had. She said the interviewer did not know what they were talking about and were just going off an answer sheet. So I don't think the interview in this case is representative of one for a Director of Engineering but is representative of an early screening interview for SRE. In which case anything BUT the expected answer to the question "What is not in an inode" would be considered incorrect.