I once cost my employer a bunch of valuable data due to a bug in my code that the second I discovered the data was gone I knew why it was gone because I understand inodes and their relationship to filenames.
That's to say it's information that is useful to have in your head if you're an SRE, just part of understanding Linux fundamentals.
That's not to say it was a good question. Despite my encounter with that bug in my code I still wouldn't have answered the question correctly. Filenames point to inodes, inodes point to data. The word filename might not even pop into my brain when thinking of inodes in isolation.
Also it doesn't show the full picture, I'm not at all sure I have what it takes to be an SRE let alone one at Google, that I sort of know what an inode is says nothing about if I can properly use that information to make architectural decisions.
That's to say it's information that is useful to have in your head if you're an SRE, just part of understanding Linux fundamentals.
That's not to say it was a good question. Despite my encounter with that bug in my code I still wouldn't have answered the question correctly. Filenames point to inodes, inodes point to data. The word filename might not even pop into my brain when thinking of inodes in isolation.
Also it doesn't show the full picture, I'm not at all sure I have what it takes to be an SRE let alone one at Google, that I sort of know what an inode is says nothing about if I can properly use that information to make architectural decisions.