I was reading the post by the Google Operating System blog titled Tough Questions From Google Job Interviews. Interesting post. For example, in one of the phone interviews the interviewee was asked:
Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.
His answer was:
A database is a way of organizing information. It’s like a genie who knows where every toy in your room is. Instead of hunting for certain toys yourself and searching the whole room, you can ask the genie to find all your toy soldiers, or only X-Men action figures, or only race cars — anything you want.
Not a bad answer. What else can I say to my eight-year-old nephew?! Maybe something like: a database is what buys your cousin these fancy toys so you will feel jealous 
But, really, as an Oracle developer or DBA, how do you explain to “non-techie” people what you do? I usually do not go into details. When I’m asked: What do you do? I just say: I’m a computer programmer. Everyone knows what a computer is, and hopefully, everyone knows that computers need programs to work.
Possibly related:
- Oracle SQL Developer Graduated
- Oracle SQL Developer 1.1 New Features
- Oracle SQL Developer 1.2 Released
- Control When Oracle SQL Developer Completes Your Code
- Oracle SQL Developer Updated
Tagged interview | Post a Comment
8 year olds are easy. It is adult company at dinner parties I struggle with.
August 3rd, 2006, at 1:44 pm #I eventually settled for ‘I help people read books.’
Hi Eddie,
that’s the point - always when my children talks about what i am really doing i start to explain, try to find pictures. but it’S abstract isn’t it? So it would be easier for me if i would be a taxi driver - so they could very easy imagine what i am doing the whole day!
cheers
August 3rd, 2006, at 11:01 pm #Karl
My nephew thinks I drive lorries for a job (it’s a long story). As a result, I’m really cool! If he thought for one second I messed around with computers all day I would drop down in the “good uncle” ratings
Database: Big buckets that store all your information. The buckets come in different shapes, colours and sizes.
Cheers
Tim…
August 4th, 2006, at 12:17 am #When I told my granny that my company name is Yahoo! she said “they give out free thing. Will they pay you anything?”
August 4th, 2006, at 6:18 am #Thanks guys for giving me more ideas on what to say when asked what I do in life. I can safely say:
Just to avoid Oracle, the 29th most popular brand of 2006. Sweet
August 4th, 2006, at 12:00 pm #I normally say that I push buttons.
August 6th, 2006, at 3:43 pm #The first time I auditioned for Jeopardy!, I thought it would be good to be listed as “Information Architect”, but I hadn’t thought through the whole “3 sentences” thing. This latest time, it was just computers… software…
March 24th, 2008, at 3:11 pm #