this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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on a job interview in IT, an interviewer asked me if I understood the difference between TCP and UDP. After giving the best technical explanation I could, I ended with
I could tell you a UDP joke, but I'm not sure if you'd get it.
He said go ahead
I paused, that was it.
Kind of awkward.
I didn't get the job.
This is fucking funny.
I will also tell you a joke about TCP, and if you don't get it, I will repeat.
Nothing boosts your impression on people like making them feel stupid. RIP
Yeah, but that’s not what this was.
Interview asked about thing then does not get joke about most basic property of thing. Either the interviewer is incredibly incompetent or incapable of getting a joke.
It’s a weird situation even for a job interview.
I wouldn't expect this joke to make someone feel stupid if they know what UDP is, so it feels like it was a safe bet
Interviewing is (ideally) quite a structured type of conversation, when is a job interview. A lot of people have to lock in pretty hard to deal with how unnatural it is, and they might not have the spare bandwidth to catch a joke.
Especially not someone from HR, they're fucking troglodytes.
I completely agree with your first paragraph.
But TheFogan was probably not explaining UDP to an HR person in this scenario.
Oh I've seen some pretty bad interviewing, where HR is sent in with a question sheet and a box to tick for which key words the interviewee mentioned per question.
Obviously a red flag and useless method of interviewing, but it does happen frighteningly often. Especially where the IT team is so understaffed, they can't spare the time to do interviews.
This is done, especially in government work, to limit bias in the interview process. Ideally, though, the people conducting the interviews understand the questions they're asking and can use some judgement and give credit if someone explained a concept but didn't hit the specific keyword.
Oomph, ~~buzzword~~ keyword guessing sounds like great interview indeed
Well sure, but the context for my comment was the unnatural-ness of a structured job interview. If you're not just pantsing it, such interviews follow a script, and that's not how we normally talk to each other.
Unfortunately I don’t know enough about udp to get it, is it that you dumped the information before like, asking about it?
Tcp and udp are to sum it up, internet messaging protocols. UDP specifically is when you send a message over without guaranteeing your message was received. TCP on the otherhand is more like a handshake where you send a message and expect a response back.
The joke is basically UDP=I dont know if you would get it
There's pretty basic UDP, that sends without confirming receiving. And instead of fixing it, they just slapped another protocol, TCP, on top of it.
With only UDP, you don't know, if you get it.