This question is now burnt. Nobody should be using it. (In reality, it was burnt a long time ago, but it’s crispy and black now.)
If you do use it, you’re merely selecting for people who have read posts like this on HN and reddit. Candidates who have memorized any of this will look vastly superior to those who haven’t.
It’s telling that there are already two sibling comments who are arguing that this is a good question - explains a lot about why technical interviews suck.
Just the fact those people are interested enough to read HN/Reddit for their own sake can't be a bad thing though.
I'm not an employer but I know I'd rather my workmates were the kind of people who are actually interested in computers enough to read about them for pleasure, not just those "straight by the book" types.
The problem with this question is if someone gives a good answer, it can be hard to tell if they studied it or they actually know. Maybe you can suss this out with follow ups.
If they don't give a good answer, maybe they haven't looked into networking details and debugging for some reason -- a lot of junior people haven't, but they may have the aptitude to learn and be great at it, but just don't have the knowledge base yet. Although it depends on exactly what you're hiring for, too. If you need the person like me, who will find and fix your weird problems with networking, maybe they should know this, or be able to make fairly plausible guesses; but most people on my team don't need to do that (although it's always nice to have more).
The difference is if they studied the answer, but didn't grasp the material, they got information to pass the test (maybe), but probably didn't get useful information.
I guess if you stop at each point and ask 'what could go wrong here, and how would you debug it' and they answer that well, then they've gotten the information enough.
Nonsense. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but there’s an entire industry of “tech interview test prep” that exists solely to coach candidates to answer these ridiculous questions. Any signal you might have once detected from trivia like this has now been thoroughly gamed.
What you’re doing here is arguing a truism: any candidate who memorizes the answer to the shibboleth is better than the ones who don’t, because it makes you happier that they memorized the shibboleth.
You notably do not provide any better alternative. Show me some other technical question that can surface useful information about a candidate's knowledge in a typical 30-minute interview.
The question is good because it both involves something most everyone does on a daily basis while providing a wide range of possible areas to explore further: there isn't any single "correct" answer that's possible to cover in a short time, but what candidates do tell you probably indicates what they're most familiar with.
Candidates prepping for this question isn't much of an issue since (a) most simply don't and (b) there's always room to go further into a specific part of the transaction.
If you think you can divine a candidate’s skill by tossing chicken entrails into the air and watching how they land, you’ll only consider rational counterarguments if I offer better alternatives?
How about this: ask questions relevant to the job. Stop trying to be clever.
Kidding. Don’t listen to the parent. The only problem with this question is that it’s general purpose and very well understood, but those aren’t issues. You should still ask people what port HTTPS uses even if it seems stupid because you’re going into an interview blind and you need to assess the experience of a person very quickly (and, sometimes you get surprised by charismatic fools). All questions are tools, this one will tell you that either the person knows this question very well from studying it (which is valid, and you would be able to tell) or they have some experience with it (more valid) but it will tell you where they are most comfortable talking about and you can dig more into various parts if you want.
If you do use it, you’re merely selecting for people who have read posts like this on HN and reddit. Candidates who have memorized any of this will look vastly superior to those who haven’t.
It’s telling that there are already two sibling comments who are arguing that this is a good question - explains a lot about why technical interviews suck.