SQL Server Job Interview Questions

You submitted your favorite interview questions, and I discuss 'em.

[leebrownhill]

I always miss the live stream, but thanks for posting these later on YouTube. I really enjoyed this one.

[nycgags]

worst interview question followed up with "if you cannot finish in 20 minutes you can take it home with you." The question? Write a fully functioning 3d printer. Took me about 8 hours learning/using newly released (at the time) spatial data with test data scripts. I still remember the headaches working on that. The job sucked, first day they had a document they needed me sign with my job responsibilities including about 20 bullet items we never discussed in the interview. Stock options discussed? never happened and they were in the process of selling the company, pro-rated 15% end of year bonus? Nope $1k was it. On call 24x7 (no joke) with no comp. pay, work every Saturday? Of course, show up late one Saturday? You get 3 strikes, you know what happens when you get your 3rd strike. Office Space on steroids.

[izabelam]

Haha, love the comment about recruiters and them saying to put everything on a CV! Mine actually does include things like backups and even some basic admin like setting user's privileges!
Very glad I discovered your channel and live sessions (thanks Reddit!), I will be a regular.

[furtwangler]

Amen on avoiding backups and restores as a career path... in any area of area of expertise!

[pralaysangma]

I like your talks and lecture on SQL Brent. Is there anything you want to tell that you do not like? haha.

[francisopiyo]

This is super informative. What happens when you had 3 or so years handling things that you no longer care about? How do you account for that time.

22:22 the theorical balance vs reality. Great video.

[silvanarix]

@2:36 - "If they're willing to google, copy paste, uh, things from strangers directly into production and go hit execute" - This is EXACTLY why sp_blitz and Ola Hallengren's tools haven't been run and configured in my production environment yet. I don't have time to dissect either as I act as both a DBA and sole developer for a small-medium business.

[TheRealSmendle]

@29:16 database filler is the addition of data to a table row in order to make each row equivalent to 1 data page (8kb). In a desperate attempt to reduce the chance of locking in an OLTP type system that addresses said table 1 ID at a time. (Yes RBAR would be in full effect).

[hentan]

Классные доклады, но такой темп речи даже с гугл переводчиком прям сложно воспринимать)
thank you for a cool lecture, but this speed of speech is sometimes difficult to understand even with the help of auto-translation)

[kumarpolisetty]

Really awesome. Why don't u start these kind of series on Azure data services?

[jlee]

I read that "What is database filler?" question totally differently. I thought it was asking what database feature would I consider "filler", like feature padding. Useless in most situations.

[Zoltag]

lol, deploying on Friday (esp. afternoon) is only advocated for by people who have never done it (or are perfect and have never had a deployment go bad)

[binaryboffin]

Brent, you need to rethink your slogan. I don't believe you "make Microsoft SQL Server go faster" unless you are actually increasing the speed of it. You probably make querying databases more efficient however. Please be more honest with your audience in future. Thankyou.