[elliotz]

> If all they can come up with is "Minix" and "that pissing contest with Linus", then I might see if the Linux devops guys have an opening. If they're that incurious, they'll do fine there; those guys think the world begins and ends with Linux, too.

Do you actually believe that someone is incurious simply because they don't share your own interest in Tanenbaum? Perhaps they've focused their curiosity on one of the many other luminaries in CS, or perhaps they're more interested in the topics themselves than the personalities behind them.

Your contempt for your own devops team is also disquieting. Based on your comment your company sounds like a toxic place to work.

[kjs3]

That's why we ask the question about 3 people in broadly different areas. Frankly, if you don't recognize at least one of those names and understand the foundational contributions they made, then yeah I'd call that a kind of incurious.

As to devops, you may think whatever you want. I give them shit about the "all the worlds Linux" attitude, they give me shit about "fucking research projects" (e.g. anything that isn't Linux). We understand our respective views, and it works.

[elliotz]

> That's why we ask the question about 3 people in broadly different areas. Frankly, if you don't recognize at least one of those names and understand the foundational contributions they made, then yeah I'd call that a kind of incurious.

Well that's a lot more reasonable! Your original comment left no ambiguity that candidates insufficiently knowledgeable about Tanenbaum would be shunted over to devops.

> As to devops, you may think whatever you want. I give them shit about the "all the worlds Linux" attitude, they give me shit about "fucking research projects" (e.g. anything that isn't Linux). We understand our respective views, and it works.

That could be the basis of some good-natured ribbing, which would be OK. What's not OK for a healthy company culture is the suggestion that devops people are inherently incurious, and the strong whiff of intellectual elitism which came across in your original comment.