AT&T Wireless Interview Questions & Reviews in Bothell, WA

Interviewed Apr 2009 in Bothell, WA (took 1 week)

I was contacted by the hiring manager who received my resume from the internal HR system. He set up a short phone interview and then an on site interview with him and the team. The phone interview was brief, consisting mostly of a discussion of my previous employment., the hours the posted job required and some detail about the day to day of the work environment. The manager was very friendly and accommodating to the interview schedule. At the on site interview I met briefly with the manager in a one on one session. We covered my technical skills and a few of the typical non technical questions. i.e. How do you deal with obnoxious co workers, last minute dead lines, etc... The manager indicated that these questions were more for HR than for him as he said 9 times out of 10 the interviewees give the same "safe" answers but end up behaving differently. This was essentially the tone of the entire process, very fresh and frank. He did mention that he expects his employees to keep family above work and does his best to provide a flexible schedule and accommodating work environment. I then met with a small panel of senior engineers to cover more detailed technical questions. This included a series of questions about UNIX troubleshooting and a short test administered on a laptop. The laptop was configured with two virtual machines running as a database and web server. I was asked to identify some basic configuration settings and then perform a health check of the system. The web server was then "broken" and I was asked to track down the problem and provide a solution. The database connection was down and access to the database server was not granted to me. I had to explain how I could confirm this and then detail what I would do to coordinate with a DBA to restore the service. All in all it was a very interesting and refreshing interview. The test was real world and seemed to be pulled right out of a sysadmins typical day. The manager said that the interview questions change all the time as they like to use some of their most recent issues. Don't let the lack of specifics fool you, this was a tough interview. I found myself at the extent of my knowledge on a few occasions.
The team overall was very diverse. It was apparent that the hiring manager was not interested in anyone that was not dedicated to their job. With the manager away I asked about how it was to work with him. The team had nothing but glowing reviews. They indicated that the front line level management was the best they have ever worked with in any industry. Very dedicated to their teams and always acting as a filter between them and the upper echelon. Dress code was mixed. Business casual, Jeans and t-shirts, etc... What you would expect from a west coast suburban business park. The office is your typical cube farm layout with a few offices. Two story building with a Gym, locker room and an on site cafeteria with full breakfast and lunch service. Coffee, tea and hot chocolate are free. However the manager indicated that this may not be the case forever as other offices around the country had lost those perks.