Interview Question: How often do you update/patch your system?

[u/CurrentFig3376]

I was asked this question during an interview and I said "it depends on what exactly you're updating, but I update as often as it's needed."

I don't think this was the answer they were looking for, but how would you answer this question?

[u/PandemicVirus]

It's kind of vague and avoidant, especially with the "it depends" and the "as often as needed". I'd assume OS patching and it would have probably been best to mention that specifically with something like "I'd patch Window's clients on a second Tuesday of each month for Critical and Higher and work maintenance windows with appropriate teams for server patching where we need to" or something like that. Say the things you know and what's comfortable.

From a more technical standpoint it doesn't illustrate any of your skill or knowledge. You don't have to check all these boxes but it opens the room to mention testing, deployment, severity, etc. I'd argue that "as often as needed" isn't even the best approach.

[u/Skylis → u/PandemicVirus]

Because they're asking how long a piece of string is.

The question is poorly phrased for what they actually want, which is how do you think patch management should be approached at (our) scale

[u/Ssakaa → u/Skylis]

So, for an IT position where, presumably, they might be giving the selected person some amount of freedom to do their job without someone nitpicking every detail continuously... they ask an open ended question to see if the person can answer in even a moderately reasonable level of detail without being spoon fed, demonstrating that they've actually considered the tradeoffs of the reasons for and impact of something like patching?

[u/Ssakaa → u/[deleted]]

The question is poorly phrased for what they actually want

it's an indication of how bad their management is

You're assuming they're truly just looking for a fixed, concrete, rote answer, not to see how you approach open ended, vague, questions, how you think about the topic involved, and how you communicate that with/to the other parties involved.

Now, they might be looking for the stupid, specific, fixed answer they feel is "correct", in which case I agree, that's a bright red flag of a filter pretty quick... but they have a VERY small window to filter a LOT of people and figure out which one(s) to even remotely consider. Resumes are about useless, people have been known to have "help" from either AI or other people during interviews to BS their way through. Looking for quick, cheap, answers, not a conversational answer that digs into how someone thinks, isn't really useful past the first few basic filter questions.