***Interviewing potential sys admins so us devs don't have to build everything and run everything***

Coworker: Do you know how to use cron and cron jobs?

Candidate: Yes I'm familiar with setting up users and permissions.

Me: 😳

Coworker: 😳

Boss: We will give you a call have a good day.

If you had just admitted you didn't know but we thought you could learn we might have been open to teaching you but brazenly acting like you know something when you don't is dangerous if you're running a multi thousand user production system.

I know the feeling , during the interview for my current job I was asked multiple technical questions about countering vulnerabilities to which I sincerely replied with 'I don't know' at which point I stated that my knowledge as a dev is pretty limited but I can learn. They stopped asking me dev questions let me demonstrate that when it comes to attacks and creating an awesome payload I'm more than able . I got the job on the 2nd interview out of 3 needed , basically on the 3rd one they just said 'congrats have a coffee and chill' .
What most people don't understand is that when applying for a job the interviewers are more likely to be interested in what you don't know and if you're sincere enough to admit and seem willing to learn .

"You want to hire a full time employee to babysit a computer?"

I'll go out on a limb and say he probably let the stress mess with his mind, since he was likely thinking of chown and chroot, but damn... Cron isn't easy to learn, and there's no shame in admitting you're not well-versed in its uses. 😕