This email arrived a couple of weeks ago and had the rare effect of rendering me temporarily speechless. I haven’t edited a word, apart from removing the name of the sender to protect the all too guilty.
Dear Sir,
I want to persue career in Oracle-Pl/sql.
But I do not have any recognised degree in computer science.
But still by work experience I am very well aware of Oracle-Pl/Sql.As I have no study material from Interview point of view, I am facing problems.
On coming sunday I am having interview as “Oracle-Pl/sql developer on
unix platform” in an IT company & I don’t want to let this oppotunity.If you could mail some important question-answers for above position, that will be a gr8 gr8 help to me.
Thanks & Regards
I replied :-
That would kind of defeat the point of an interview, wouldn’t it? So I’m afraid the answer is no.
Regards,
Doug
you could have really annoyed them and said “sorry, could not read your email, there was some garbled stuff in there – gr8 gr8 for example”.
(forget about the spelling error in the first sentence…)
Or better yet, send them a g8 big list of questions and wrong answers.
LewisC
Dear Sir. I am sorry that Douglas was so rude and unhelpful to your reasonable and polite request. Please don’t think all British people are like that. Please take a a look here for some top tips for your upcoming PL/SQL technical interview. Much easier than wading through all those Oracle manuals. Good luck. Love Norman.
Tom said …
“you could have really annoyed them and said “sorry, could not read your email, there was some garbled stuff in there – gr8 gr8 for example”
I thought of you when I read that 😉
Was the letter sent by Laszlo Toth?
you could always point them to OracleWTF for some great tips!
Some PL/SQL Contractors have a nerve!! ;->
i’m suppose to have a degree? why don’t people tell me this stuff?;-)
Jeez, just send him to http://www.oracleplsqlprogramming.com/resources.html and make him pee his pants.
I get similar requests on a frequent basis. Often the sender will claim to have gotten my email from some article that I’ve written (and they probably did). Some requests I’m convinced are from people who are honestly reaching out for help and reassurrance. Other requests, well, sometimes I have my doubts. I always try and respond nicely. Often all I can do is to nicely say “I don’t know.”
I do get a few of these emails and I think I normally respond very politely. What particularly bugged me about this one is that, if I help the guy with the interview, it means he’ll get a job that he doesn’t deserve. That’s the *point* of an interview.
If he’d been asking my help in learning something, that would have been different.
I’m afraid I have a cast-iron rule. If someone writes to me in Instant-Message-Speak with an interesting discussion point or suggestion for (my) improvement, then it passes the otherwise immutable filter: IM-speak brings forth rudeness and abruptness from me that I won’t apologise for and won’t lose sleep over.
If someone takes the trouble to write you an email note, they can at least do so in plausibly-passable English. We’re not asking for Shakespeare here… just competence or something approaching it.
Anything else is just plain insulting, and deserves an insulting message by way of reply… or filing in the trash can.
Howard,
I suppose the “gr8 gr8” did gr8 a bit 😉
Part of me agrees with you and can understand your position. Great versus gr8 – what on earth did that save him? He could have stuck to a single ‘great’ rather than ‘gr8 gr8’! (Actually, there are far too many gr8s round here – better hold onto my keys)
It is extremely lazy and bad-mannered and yet he expects me to spend my spare time coming up with a list of questions and answers?!
Another part sees a non-English name and makes allowances for them that I would never expect anyone to make for me.
Still, what annoys me most is that he wants me to do his interview for him. That’s what I find unforgiveable.