I don't know. Personally, I'd prefer an interviewee that comes to the interview with an open mind and actually tries to make suggestions based on the view of the infrastructure that they have acquired based on the information I have given them or they inferred in their research of my company.
Of course they might be wrong because naturally, they can't have the full picture. But I'd much rather have an employee I can hold a discussion with and get input from then one that blindly does what I tell them to. In the end, I might as well have made a bad decision or overlooked something.
In fact, having an engaging discussion during the interview is quite a sure-fire way to get hired if you are in an interview with me (provided the stuff you talk about makes sense).
Hmm. Probably, but there are people out there who are qualified to know how to scale better than you, presumably.
On the other hand, people who are religious about technology choices (faith rather than logic) tend to be bad matches. People who don't revisit their decisions don't make great engineers. I don't want choices made because of a previous lifestyle decision.
Totally true. Anybody who is a fanboy of a certain technology is not a good hire. It's always good to have passionate people, but passionate about an idea, not a tool. The bottom line is that in most cases, it doesn't even matter, just as long as things are getting done. If the people you work with don't appreciate that, you've got deeper problems.
specifically, interviewees that inform you you should be using postgresql can be immediately rejected.
"do you use mysql or postgresql?" "oh, mys-" "YOU SHOULD SWITCH TO POSTGRESQL!!"