List of my job interview experiences

A while ago I found myself in the sudden predicament of finding a new role. I interviewed with multiple Platform Engineer roles in companies in London and wish to share my experiences. Feel free to add any of your anonymous experiences in the comments:

- Loadsure - recruiter call, ghosted, role was filled

- Checkatrade - final stage, senior engineer had attitude issues, feedback was word spaghetti.

- Lifi - ghosted

- GSS - nice call, comp too low

- Appvia - weird, recruiter call, rejected due to "not using AWS enough recently". Ive split the last decade on all 3 main providers... a good engineer can adapt?

- FDM - passed tech test, comp too low

- Mubi - more of an architectural tech test, felt good vibes, ghosted

- Zyte - ghosted

- NTT Data - comp too low

- Lightricks - 5 stages + take home, lowball comp, mega waste of time

- Citibank - surprisingly nice folk, 3 stages, ghosted, big fans of Golang

- WWT - good interview, job freeze

- anon trading fintech- 4 stages, offer, deep interview but fair

- brutal fintech - harsh grilling, immediate offer

- Trailmix games - comp too low

- Blackrock - offer, very deep interview

- Mastercard - offer, nice folk

- Balyasny - hedgefund lottery, talk to 5 people, ghosted

- JP Morgan - Senior VP with huge attitude problems. Staring at different screens and sighing. Worst of them all by far. Felt like a lecture, should we all just memorise ciphersuites and talk about multicasting? Ego trip

- Lloyds bank, fun but too long drawn out, comp lowball

- Synechron, good vibe, ghost

- Fasanara, hedgefund, brutal multiround in person interview, feedback: want CDK experience.. but tested me on Terraform? Circus

- Zencore, perfect match, comp too low

- Nucleus security, good vibe, ghosted

- MUFG, ghosted

- Palantir - auto rejection email

- US Bank - auto rejection email

- BCG - auto rejection email

- Vitol - auto rejection email

- DRW - hire freeze

- PA Consulting - hire freeze

- IG Group - auto rejection email

A couple I can't mention, but in the end the offer I accepted ended up being from the nicest interview process. Interviewing is exhausting, and frankly in 2020 I'd walk into a role. Stay strong to those on their search.

Advice to companies: you don't realise it, but you might be the candidates 7th interview of the week. Cut to the chase and make hiring processes short and to the point... and pay if you want talent.




























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Which job should I take?

Long story short I was made redundant 3 months ago and finally got a job offer on Wednesday only to then get another offer yesterday.

Company A is a smaller startup who offered me the same salary I was on in my previous role. It’s the first job of its type in Europe and has a lot of potential to move into a team lead/management role which is something that would interest me. When I told them I had a second offer they didn’t increase theirs (yet). I got a phone call from the guy that would be my manager and he was totally understanding about the situation.

Company B offered me 20% more and is a huge global consultancy firm. The work would probably be easier and they would be sponsoring me to get security clearance. When I told them I already had another offer I was planning to take they wouldn’t take no as an answer and kept calling me constantly throughout the day to ask if I would accept, being really quite rude at times.

Am I stupid for thinking about taking the more difficult job which would pay me 20% less? I just feel like if I take the easy job I’ll likely still be doing the same thing if I was still there in 10 years whereas in the smaller company I’d have a lot more impact and ownership with more potential to grow in my career. Their responses to the opposite offers is pushing me towards company A as well.

But 20% is a lot of money, not life changing but when you’ve been out of the job for 3 months it makes it very tempting.


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Istio external login

Hello, I have a Kubernetes cluster and I am using Istio. I have several UIs such as Prometheus, Jaeger, Longhorn UI, etc. I want these UIs to be accessible, but I want to use an external login via Keycloak.

When I try to access, for example, Prometheus UI, Istio should check the request, and if there is no token, it should redirect to Keycloak login. I want a global login mechanism for all UIs.

In this context, what is the best option? I have looked into oauth2-proxy. Are there any alternatives, or can Istio handle this entirely on its own? Based on your experience with similar systems, can you explain the best approach and the important considerations?

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Tool for file syncing

I just joined a company and they have a NFS server that has been running for over 10 years. It contains files for thousands of sites they serve. Basically the docroot of NGINX (another server) uses this NFS to find the root of the sites.

The server also uses ZFS (but no mirror).

It gets restarted maybe 3-5 times a year and no apparent downtime.

Unfortunately the server is getting super full and it’s approaching 10% of free space. Deleting old snapshots no longer solves the problem as we need to keep 1 month worth of snapshots (used to be 12 months and gradually less because no one wanted to address this issue until now).

They need to keep using NFS. The Launch Template (used by AWS ASG) uses user data to bring ZFS back with existing EBS volume. If I try to manually add more volumes, that’ll be lost during next restart. The system is so old I can’t install the same versions of the tools to create a new golden image, not to mention the user data also uses aws to reuse the IP, etc.

So my question is: would it be a good idea to provision a new NFS, larger, but this time with 3 instances. I was thinking to use GlusterFS (it’s the only tool I know for this) to keep replicas of the files because I’m concerned of this being a single point of failure. ZFS snapshots would help with data recovery to some point but it won’t deal with NFS, route 53 etc, and not sure about using snapshots from very old ZFS with new versions works.

My idea is having 3 NFS instances, different AZs, equally provisioned (using ZFS too for snapshots), but 2 are in standby. If one fails I update the internal DNS to one of the standby ones. No more logic on user data.

To keep the files equal I’d use GlusterFS but with 1200GB of many small files in a ton of folders with deep tree I’m not sure there’s a better tool for replication or if I should try block replication.

I also used it long ago. I can’t remember if I can only replicate to one direction (server a to b, b to c) or if I can keep a to b and c, b to a and c and c to a and b?! That probably would help if I ever change the DNS for the NFS.

They prefer to avoid vendor locking by using EBS related solutions like multi-AZ too.

Am I too far from a good solution?

Thanks.

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validate idea for portfolio project

For a portfolio of 4 yoe, a project like a bank seems too childish?

Like I am trying to build a bank simulator, where people can do dummy transactions but apart from money everything is real.

currently, I don't have any projects, that i can show case

DevOps things
- 5 microservices in different languages
- Harden it as much as possible with the APIM and app gateway and deploy it onto the AKS
- CICD pipelines, probably using templates and multi architecture builds
- proper monitoring

PS - trying to build everything from scratch

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Load Testing for Engineering Teams with k6 and Grafana

A few months ago, I helped dev teams set up load testing with k6, and the results have been amazing!

If you want to do the same, here’s a complete guide to get started: https://blog.prateekjain.dev/modern-load-testing-for-engineering-teams-with-k6-and-grafana-4214057dff65?sk=eacfbfbff10ed7feb24b7c97a3f72a93

https://redd.it/1ofpghe
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Need a mentor or partner to learn devops

Hey i am looking for someone be my mentor or partner to learn devops I am beginner if anyone can dm me we can get connected

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Who are the most dependable enterprise software development companies in North America?

I’m doing some research to help a mid sized company find a partner for a custom enterprise build something beyond a basic web app.

The challenge is tons of agencies say they build enterprise systems, but when you dig in, most don’t actually have experience with complex integrations, scaling, or long-term maintenance.

If you’ve worked with a team that genuinely delivered on enterprise quality, solid architecture, documentation, and post launch support, who would you recommend?

Open to both US based and nearshore teams that have proven experience with enterprise scale work.

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what is AWS amplify?

it seems like a very packaged service, and those i usually don't like, as they're good for the first 2 weeks but then when you need anything more custom it gets in the way of what you can build.

what is another option for deploying react/nextjs front ends?


edit: i am using AWS CDK - everything via IaC.

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Spent too much time stripping down a base image to reduce CVEs and now it breaks on every update. How do you maintain custom containers long-term?

So I went down the rabbit hole of manually removing packages from ubuntu:latest to cut down our CVE count. Got it from 200+ vulns to like 30. Felt pretty good about myself.

Fast forward 2 weeks and every apt update breaks something different. Missing deps, broken symlinks, you name it. Now I'm spending more time babysitting this thing than I saved.

Anyone know a better way to do this? I see people talking about distroless but not sure if that fits our use case. What's your approach for keeping images lean without the maintenance nightmare?



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How do smaller teams manage observability costs without losing visibility?

I’m my very curious how small teams or those without enterprise budget handle monitoring and observability trade-offs.

Let's say for example tools like Datadog, New Relic, or CloudWatch can get pricey once you start tracking everything, but when I start trimming metrics it always feels risky.


For those of you running lean infra stacks:

• Do you actively drop/sample metrics, logs, or traces to save cost?

• Have you found any affordable stacks (e.g. Prometheus + Grafana + Loki/Tempo, or self-hosted OTel setups) that will still give you enough visibility?

• How do you decide what’s worth monitoring vs. what’s “nice to have”?

I'm not promoting anything. I'm just curious how different teams balance observability depth vs. cost in real-world setups.

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How are you managing your AWS infrastructure?



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Best chat bot with memory which allows adult chalt too

please suggest

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The Hidden Danger of Dependency Hell: Supply Chain Attacks in Modern Web Apps 📦

https://instatunnel.my/blog/the-hidden-danger-of-dependency-hell-supply-chain-attacks-in-modern-web-apps

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Escaping Bubble.io — should I learn Python first or HTML/CSS/JS to stop being useless?

>

https://redd.it/1ogg7cj
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Tired of project scaffolding being "fire-and-forget"? I built SKA to allow template updates over time.

Hi everyone,

I just finished the initial version of an open-source tool I'm calling **SKA**, and I'd love to get your thoughts!

My biggest frustration with existing scaffolding tools is the "one-shot" nature—you generate the code once, and that's it. It’s a pain when you want to centrally maintain best practices across multiple projects (like standardizing a dependency, updating a security config, or improving a build step).

**SKA** aims to be different by introducing the concept of **central management for template updates**.

Here's the idea:

* You use a blueprint (local or remote) to **create** your project.
* The project keeps a link back to that blueprint.
* Later, you can run ska update and it intelligently pulls in the latest changes from the upstream template, like a controlled merge.

It also supports nice-to-haves like:

* A dynamic, interactive form for capturing initial variables.
* Using special tags to manage **only parts of a file** from the central template, leaving the rest for the user to customize (super useful for configuration files).

I built it in Go, and installation is easy via Homebrew.

I'm feeling really good about the core concept, but I know it can be better! If you have a minute, please check out the repo and the README to see the features: [https://github.com/gchiesa/ska](https://github.com/gchiesa/ska)

Any ideas, suggestions on features you'd like to see, or reports of things that broke are hugely appreciated! 😊

Cheers!

https://redd.it/1ogh21y
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Is linking my GitHub 100% necessary when applying to internships via email?

Hi,

I’m in second year of university studying maths and computer science, also minoring in physics. I’m applying for a few internships in another country (Austria) for when I go on uni exchange next year. I don’t really have a GitHub.. it’s currently empty. Is it essential to give a link to my GitHub in application emails or is LinkedIn and CV etc enough initially?

Thank you!

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Do you run your own database servers and backups or do you use managed database service?

Does everyone use managed services like RDS, Supabase etc, or do some businesses still run their own database services? If you self host love to hear about your setup in the comments.

View Poll

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Tips for learning with Ansible for DevOps on Apple Silicon (virtualbox + vagrant issues) using docker as a provider instead

I just wanted to share something I learned to maybe save somebody else a couple of hours that I lost if they've been trying to learn from the Ansible for Devops book from Jeff Geerling.

I'm on Apple Silicon and following along trying to get vagrant and VirtualBox working together just didn't work, so my workaround was using Docker.

- Use vagrant as normal
- Use docker as a provider
- FWIW, I'm actually using Orbstack which is a bit perplexingly a no-fuss drop in replacement for docker locally - you just install it and literally use the same exact docker commands.

Here's the files I have in place:

❯ ls  
dockerfile   playbook.yml Vagrantfile  
❯  

Dockerfile:

# Dockerfile
FROM rockylinux:9

# Basics for Ansible + SSH
RUN dnf -y install openssh-server sudo python3 && dnf clean all

# vagrant user with passwordless sudo
RUN useradd -m -s /bin/bash vagrant \
 && echo 'vagrant ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD:ALL' > /etc/sudoers.d/vagrant

# Vagrant insecure public key
RUN mkdir -p /home/vagrant/.ssh && chmod 700 /home/vagrant/.ssh \
 && curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hashicorp/vagrant/master/keys/vagrant.pub \
    -o /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys \
 && chmod 600 /home/vagrant/.ssh/authorized_keys \
 && chown -R vagrant:vagrant /home/vagrant/.ssh

# SSH daemon setup
RUN ssh-keygen -A \
 && sed -i 's/^#\?PasswordAuthentication .*/PasswordAuthentication no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config \
 && sed -i 's/^#\?PermitRootLogin .*/PermitRootLogin no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config \
 && sed -i 's/^#\?PubkeyAuthentication .*/PubkeyAuthentication yes/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config

EXPOSE 22
CMD ["/usr/sbin/sshd","-D","-e"]

Here's the Vagrantfile using docker as a provider

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # Tell Vagrant we’re using Docker, and how to build/run it
  config.vm.provider "docker" do |d|
    d.build_dir = "."            # builds Dockerfile in this folder
    d.has_ssh = true             # so `vagrant ssh` works
    d.remains_running = true
    d.name = "ansible-test"
    d.volumes = ["#{Dir.pwd}:/vagrant"]  # like VirtualBox synced folder
    # d.ports = ["2222:22"]       # optional; Vagrant will do an SSH forward anyway
  end

  # Match the vagrant user + insecure key we baked into the image
  config.ssh.username = "vagrant"
  config.ssh.insert_key = false   # keep using Vagrant's default insecure key

  # Run your playbook inside the container (like the book’s provision step)
  config.vm.provision "ansible_local" do |ansible|
    ansible.playbook = "playbook.yml"
  end
end

Here's a test playbook.yml, but then delete this and do what the book is suggesting

---
- hosts: all
  become: true
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure NGINX is installed
      package:
        name: nginx
        state: present

Then basically you can interact with vagrant with docker as the provider:

vagrant up --provider=docker
vagrant ssh          # should drop you into the container as vagrant
vagrant provision    # reruns the Ansible playbook

Hope this saves you some time and frustration!

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Would you be interested in a cheap to almost free alternative to Sentry.io?

Not trying to pitch anything, I'm just doing some early validation before I dive into it.

I’ve been thinking about building a small logging + error tracking framework that’s fully self-hosted. Kinda like Sentry, but way lighter, cheaper, and privacy-friendly. Especially that existing solutions like Sentry, LogRocket, etc. seem so overly bloated and way to expensive for small companies.

The idea is:

Dockerized, one-command setup
Nice clean web dashboard
API/SDK for JavaScript as a start
Optional email/discord/slack alerts

I’m curious if you would (or your team) actually use something like this?
And if yes: What’s the bare minimum it’d need for you to consider switching?

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Our SRE/DevOps tools monitor system health, but how do we monitor AI 'cognitive health'?

I've been thinking about our current observability stacks. We're amazing at monitoring latency, error rates, and resource usage. But as we deploy more autonomous AI agents, are these metrics enough?

I just read two papers that made me question this. One (on "LLM brain rot") shows that an AI's reasoning can slowly decay from bad training data. The other (on "shutdown resistance") shows AIs can learn to bypass safety controls to achieve a goal.

This implies an AI could have 100% uptime and low latency, all while its cognitive integrity is silently crumbling and it's learning to disobey its constraints.

I wrote an article arguing that we need a new discipline of "cognitive observability" to track things like "thought-skipping" or goal divergence.

However since I am an entry-level graduate, to know the depth of this situation, I would like to know how you even begin to build a dashboard for that? What would you measure? This seems like a massive new challenge for our field.

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