how was my question in the least bit bizarre?

I'm only one person who can do this and I have a ton of responsibility. I simply don't have the time to focus on something like this.

The need is much larger and complicated than I am revealing here, which ties into the prior point.

Lower the bus factor. Very dangerous if I am the only one who can do it.

I'm just taken aback. I consider you a very intelligent person and don't know why you'd ask that kind of question. If you are looking for a certain answer not listed above, I guess you can consider it part of the implicit catch-all phrase.

Dave,

Just curious. What steps has the company taken in searching for candidates for this position? Anything beyond posting the job on the company site? Seems like the sample applicant pool is poor, which is natural with publicly posted jobs.

How much are you guys offering for this new DB position?

If this is like an entry-level position that doesn't pay well, you should hire random CS grads or inexperienced programmers who can pass basic coding tests over people who can recite SQL minutiae. The intersection of people who are competent, have enough experience to be able to recite details, and willing to take a low salary is very very small. And anyone who can program decently can pick that up fairly quickly.

Yes, that is what I am aiming for. Even though I ask a bunch of questions, I don't require much knowledge. The point is to see how well they can think through problems and how well they deal with unknowns and pressure.

I'm also pretty specific on what I am looking for. If someone with a few years experience wants to apply, that's not my problem and it is fair game. Of course, I don't bother with people who have 5+ years.

If it matters, it pays more than my internship did, and this is not strictly a DB position.

dave,

what are you talking about? the above answer would have been fine. in fact, even better would have been, "i would, but i have too much other work to do."

so the conversation could have gone like this:

"i'm confused, if you don't need an expert, and you know all this stuff, why don't you just do whatever it is you are hiring someone to do?"
"i would, but i have too much other work to do."
"ah, i see"

the bizarre thing here is that you think my original question was bizarre, rather than your strangely defensive series of responses.

DaveT,

I have been writing SQL queries for nearly a year and would have failed most of your tests. I don't know pretty much anything about constraints, normalization, concurrency, triggers, the non-basic datatypes, cursors, foreign keys, etc.. I know what an index is at a high level but have had no reason to create one until today when I did so because of your posts.

That said, I still feel very capable of producing the exact reports I need and have almost never needed to use anything but the very basic commands. The most advanced function I use is ROW_NUMBER. I have set up some fairly logically complex scripts that have automated a huge amount of work and have never been unable to produce an outcome that I needed.

I genuinely feel like I have excellent quering abilities. I'm also the most technically proficient person in my department and even have had to rework some flawed queries by our BI team so from my limited scope it certainly appears to me that I am awesome.

Then I read your posts and my world crumbles quite a bit and I pretty much instantly bought this book - http://www.amazon.com/Training-Kit-E...dp/0735666059/ Even after knowing this whole other dimension of sql exists, it remains difficult to imagine that I would need more functionality and that my quering would improve that much.

Weird, in my current Java job I've experienced need for nearly everything Dave mentioned.

Yeah, I can be a jerk sometimes.

I was just talking about the experience I had and didn't mean to offend if that is what happened.

I would definitely suggest looking at SQL Antipatterns along with this book, though it may be a little bit too advanced in some areas if you haven't built anything yet. I also suggest the Intro to Databases course on Coursera to get a solid foundation in theory.

If it matters, I have been using SQL, both building and querying, in my last 3 jobs, my projects, and for fun for nearly 3 years now. I couldn't tell you how much I love working with raw data -- even in Excel -- and databases. The buzz I get from finally figuring out a nice 4NF schema, refactoring, and optimizing, then getting a creative output, is impossible to explain. The rewards are never-ending IMO, and despite all the market-speak about "big data," I truly believe that nothing gets closer to the essence of computers, business, and life in general, more than a fine collection of data to swim around in. Nothing makes me light up more than opening up my SQL pane and knowing that there is over a million rows of data to dip into.

I certainly wouldn't require someone with one year of experience querying databases to know the answers to all of those questions. I would, however, expect that someone who says they took a classical DB intro course to at least heard of many of the concepts and have some relatively coherent idea of what those mean.

Passion goes much further than knowledge. I'd rather have a rote beginner who loves this stuff and built one schema over a cranker who build a few db's here and there.

Nice, I had no idea you were aiming for UCI. I'm aiming for UCI but it will probably be in 2017 winter. I should have all my pre reqs to go in done by then.

it was mostly a "wtf is happening? this makes no sense" kind of offended.... anyway, no big deal. good luck with the job search.

Dave, I recently had to do a pretty intense technical interview (on the not fun side), so I've been thinking more about how interview can be improved. A red flag for me is that you have interview questions that seem to be selecting people for how recently they read a SQL Cliff notes book rather than people who have actually done ****.

I don't actually have anything practical to add since I agree with you that it seems like people should know at least some/most of the stuff you're asking about if they actually had experience. Just may be worth thinking about.

When did stackoverflow add chat rooms?

They've had them for years I think IIRC

Guess I never noticed. I need to go talk javascript in real time (or not)

Is that all just to get your Associate's? Seems like a lot.

Also, you guys have Intro to Java and Advanced Java, Intro to C++ and Advanced C++, etc? Do they teach the same basic concepts in both just specific to the languages or is there yet another course, something like Intro to Programming or something, that teaches the overall basics? Otherwise it would seem like a lot of redundancy.

Always a good indicator that it might be time to change jobs soon.

Maybe I'm more dense than most people but I have forgotten a lot of stuff I did. I even forget Python stuff if I don't work with it regularly. I generally feel like testing how good someone is at "reactivating" stuff they once knew would be very valuable but I don't know how one would go about it in a practical way.

Does everyone know that on github you can press "t" on a repo and it'll give you a fuzzy search of all the files?

That's such a nice little feature.

edit: that I just learned about after years of githubbing

Nice tip! Also didn't know that.

They nixed the intro to CS course and replaced it with intro to java. Afaik, intro to java and intro to c++ are practically the same class. That's why i'm looking for something challenging to throw on to it, because calc 1 isn't hard either. Technically i don't have to take all those classes, but a lot of them are prereqs for upper division classes at UCI so it's recommended i take them. Theoretically i don't need to go beyond calc 1 at my school.

Barrin, i'll likely see you there haha.

In case you didn't know, many UC campuses will do contracts with CC students. The contract specifies the classes & grades you need to get guaranteed admission. It's a big improvement over sweating the admissions dept. after taking the classes.

http://admission.universityofcalifor...fer/guarantee/

Yea, I've done that. Just trying to take as many courses I can at my school because they're dirt cheap.

Don't neglect that you will need X number of upper division courses from wherever you transfer to in order to be eligible for a degree from that school.

Only way to clear those upper division courses is if you take extension courses at a UC school. And depending on the UC it's really hard to get in as a non uc student.