Microsoft's Personnel Puzzle 961
theodp writes "CNET reports on Microsoft's reputation for arrogance in its personnel practices, citing the experience of Arthur Sorkin, who responded to an unsolicited invitation to interview with MS back in 2000. But instead of trying to sell him on the company or the job, interviewers challenged him with a technical 'pop quiz.' Sorkin, who holds a PhD in CS, withdrew his application. During the past year, Microsoft called Sorkin to say it had scheduled a phone interview with him for another job, although Sorkin hadn't applied for it and no one had asked if he was interested."
Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:2, Insightful)
He has a record that speaks for itself. He jumped through enough hoops to get the PhD, and he erroneously believed they recognized his established experience, given that they contacted him.
So yes, he is above stupid mind games.
Unsolicited invitation... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between you asking them for a job and them asking you if you want a job.
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:4, Insightful)
Our company does this, other companies I've interviewed do this. You can't blame them, it's not like every one is completely honest with there resume. It didn't phase me a bit when I was quized at my last interview.
Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Well... I guess the fact that they quizzed him does not supprise me. I mean, any company of that size and public exposure will want to ensure high standards by screening even the most promissing and highly reffered applicants. The fact that they contacted him, does not mean they should not run him through this screening.
What is sucky about this is the fact that they scheduled him for an interview after he withdrew the application. That seems kindoff fishy, and I would not want a prospective employer retain and reuse my info this way after I told them to suck it.
bad minds = bad software (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if a product is so big that one person can't understand it, you can still understand what you're working on.
This remind me of the "Joel on Software" article about python. Better software developers stay up-to-date because they want to. Lesser software develoeprs stay up-to-date because they have to.
Why would working at Microsoft be interesting, unless you're political?
PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:2, Insightful)
When I worked for a particular company, we instituted a "programmer intelligence test". It didn't test nonsense like "Define Polymorphism", it had questions where they actually had to think like a programmer. I found that the more educated the person, the worse they did on the test! I had a number of PhD's get all affronted when faced when having to soil their precious fingers with actually proving they could think, rather than regurgitate the stuff they learned in college. My theory is that the really good programmers tended to want to get out into the world and learn practical knowledge, while the less proficient ones continued on to get "educated".
(Example question, since I know you're curious: You have triple redundant storage of certain critical data. Write a subroutine that takes three 32 bit integers and produces a result where each bit is "voted on" by the corresponding bit in the three inputs. This question is designed to see if someone can think in terms of bits. One fool actually wrote, "First convert input to binary")
What happens with many big organizations... (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks funny from the outside, because even though we know better, it's easy to think of any large organization (i.e., Microsoft) as a single entity, when it's actually a group of individuals flying in loose formation, each doing what they percieve to be their job. Sometimes two people's jobs in such an organization will run to cross-purposes.
Depends on the test (Score:3, Insightful)
Tests are a very rough measure of your skill. They're used to broadly separate candidates into maybe-acceptable and useless. You wouldn't make your decision based on it. You have to interview the person, and you can tell better from that than from the test whether he's any good or not. The tests are good only to weed out the obviously unacceptable candidates before you schedule an interview.
I've taken some of these, and sometimes they're an insult; they ask about easily-looked-up trivia. And there's a difference between solving problems and answering riddles. I don't much care for tests that are nominally testing my "lateral thinking", because I hate the idea of losing a job because I didn't get the joke.
Without seeing what this test looked like I can't support or condemn the guy. But let's just say that for some tests, yeah, I'd consider myself above it. Especially if I was invited.
Re:PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:5, Insightful)
With an opener like that, my expectation would be that they already had a good handle on my skill set through a referral, my published work, or some other means. Here's a dating analogy: You see an attractive woman at a bar, and offer to buy her a drink, complementing her good looks. Then you ask if she has any photos of her relatives, because you want to be sure that if you eventually breed, your offspring won't be ugly. Wouldn't you expect a slap in the face?
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:5, Insightful)
And how many times have
Further, some of these technical interviews are there to identify if a person has the skills for a specific job. Somebody can have a PhD in chemical engineering and published articles on polymers, so would sound like a wonderful candidate. However, they may not fit into the specific job because they focused on polymer reaction simulation, and not on high temp polymer behavior, or understand the mechanical properties.
Re:PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:1, Insightful)
Doh! (Score:5, Insightful)
You watch. They're going to start handing out tonnes of free development software to get people re-interested in developing for Windows. With web apps all the rage, who needs 95% of the market with desktop apps when you can develop with PHP, Rails or other open source tools and get 100% of the market with web apps?
Re:You can smell the arrogance in the air! (Score:3, Insightful)
Because they cold-called him and invited him for an interview. Implication: "We know you're qualified, and we really want you to work for us."
Re:PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:3, Insightful)
I would ask something like handing them a bubble sort with a simple error in it, like boundary checking. If they catch that error, they're qualified to be a junior programmer.
If they ask why I'm using my own bubble sort instead of calling the standard qsort() routine, they're senior developer/analyst material.
Re: PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
> What, you think because you have a PhD, your feces doesn't stink? Guess what -- it does.
> When I worked for a particular company, we instituted a "programmer intelligence test". It didn't test nonsense like "Define Polymorphism", it had questions where they actually had to think like a programmer. I found that the more educated the person, the worse they did on the test!
I don't suppose it occurred to you that there's more to CS than programming.
Did you give these educated people a chance to ask you some questions that require thinking like a PhD?
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:1, Insightful)
that certainly was my experience at microsoft...
all this BS about 'it's important to find out *how* you think'
Re: PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:2, Insightful)
> Thats right. A PhD in CS does not make a great programmer. A PhD trains and qualifies you to carry out research. A PhD creates knowledge instead of regurgitating it.
And only an idiot would hire a PhD for a programming job. That's like hiring an M.D. to run urine tests, or an aerospace engineer to handle luggage at an airport.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:1, Insightful)
Former Microsoftie here (Score:5, Insightful)
However.... Microsoft IMO has a big problem. On one hand they keep saying that they want "out of the box thinkers" and on the other hand, they want a fair degree of conformity regarding playing politic, etc. So these pop quizes (which are often anything but technical) are just a way to pretend to satisfy the first demand while really satisfying the former.
Out of all the interviews I had, I only had one that was technically worth *anything.* In no other case did I feel like I could really have an intelligent technical conversation with the interviewer. So yes, I think that their interview skills need some work.
Re:PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm curious about the answer....
In my world, triple redundant implies at least 4 copies and you have three 32 bit integers. Also, what is meant by "voted on"? Is there some kind of AI routine that says to itself "which bit from these three integers do I like best? Which one had the most effective election campaign?"
Triple redundancy of critical data implies ensuring it can be recovered. What happens during the writing process where individual copies are not properly written (e.g. a corrupted raid)? I'd entertain the idea of going with blocking the data into fixed size 2 dimensional arrays and performing checksums on each axis. In the event of a disk failure, the data can be reasonably rebuilt by isolating the specific byte or bytes in that array that fails the checksum verification and applying a reverse checksum algorithm to determine the most likely original byte value.
Before I'd answer that question, I'd try to find out the purpose behind that subroutine.
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually Microsoft is testing how quickly you can come up with a solution to a problem they have presented you with.
Judging by their products, this should be a valuable skill at Microsoft.
If you were looking for a job that required long term dedication to complete a goal and the ability to coordinate many tasks at the same time in order to achieve something coherent and complete, then you would consider the ability to achieve a Phd. in Computer Science, along with the track record of the candidate.
No, Microsoft doesn't operate that way. Sell a faulty product to the customer, get a list of problems back, dole out the list to employees, put the fixes in patches, lather, rinse, repeat.
Microsoft is trying to recruit the people who come up with a quick fix, not the people who think long term. Their recruiting techniques seem to be in line with their development techniques.
If you want long term thinking, go work for IBM's mainframe division.
Re:What happens with many big organizations... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you were interviewing Codd for a database gig, would you grill him on manhole covers & mysql syntax?
Re:You can smell the arrogance in the air! (Score:2, Insightful)
A company should try to sell itself to anyone they see as worth interviewing. The employee usually has the option to reject a job. Either they are already employed or they will have other offers.
If the candidate turns them down, they've lost that person possibly for good, which means they're missing out on the money they would have made from him.
Re: PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:3, Insightful)
And how many times have /.'ers complained about somebody who had great credentials but didn't actually know anything. There are some PhD's earned their degree by being handheld by a professor and just following what he says. They may know what they researched well, but the insight needed to expand just isn't there.
So talk to the guy and find out how he thinks - once you're an established expert in the field, you are above stupid proficiency tests.
Re:The second sentance maybe? (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you never actually had a job before? I've had jobs handed to me, and then had to go through the whole process of being "interviewed", background check, tons of paperwork, etc. Large corporations have to show they hired fairly, hence even when a job is specifically for you, you still have to be chosen acceptable for the job by the HR folks.
Re:You can smell the arrogance in the air! (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if it was poor, the company would need to sell itself to me. Thats what the interview process is for- for both sides to sell themselves. I need to convince the other company that they want me. They need to convince me that I will enjoy working there. If we don't both convince the other, we each try again.
Stupid answer to a stupid question (Score:4, Insightful)
A: "First, I'd question the business case for moving mount Fuji."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I recognize that this question should demonstrate your creative problem solving, but it seems to me that 9 times out of 10, a lot of technical "problems" out there are created by extremely stupid business requirements wich all too often come from extremely stupid business people. It's amazing sometimes how speaking to them in thier own insipid psudo-language (especially in front of thier peers) can slap them into reality. Granted, they won't stay in reality long, but the fresh air and change of scenery can do them some good with repeated visits:)
Re:MS vs. Google (Score:5, Insightful)
One of my friends worked for Google, and he told me their stories. We both worked for Microsoft. Google is FAR more arrogant. Among other things, they decided to open a branch in India because they've "exhausted the talent supply in the United States." This is all the more remarkable because they only have a few thousand employees, only a few hundred in NYC. Apparently they've got all 300 or so good programmers in NYC. That certainly came as a shock to me, especially considering that most other places in NYC pay MUCH more than Google does. Perhaps they've exhausted the supply of talented people willing to work for half the industry standard wage?
In any case, arrogance breeds downfall, soon enough. Most of the Microserfs I met were not terribly arrogant, not moreso than your average techie at least. Though Google loving seems to be the order of the day, I'm not such a fan. A company valued at 100x earnings that thinks it vomits sunshine, well, granny's pension fund is going to lose some money.
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:3, Insightful)
A better analogy is credit card offers. They obviously want your money but they still need to check your credit history before they decide if you're worthy or not.
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, the presumptive attitude of this sort of company amazes me. I don't care who they are; if they invited me to interview with them then they'd better make a sales pitch to me as part of the interview.
What these places always seem to forget is that any good candidate is going to be assessing them during the interview process as well. Are their managers practical, or doublespeak weenies? Do their technical guys know their stuff? Are their offices smart and professional-seeming? Is everyone working 10-hour-days with no focus on anything but the job, or do they actually seem to have a life and a sense of humour as well?
If I ask these things automatically, as a good but not spectacularly qualified developer, what do they think someone with a solid PhD and 20+ years of experience doing serious work for serious employers is going to do? He's certainly going to consider trivial logic puzzles a waste of his time, I'd imagine, and frankly, who'd blame him?
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously take a look at what this guy has done. He's not just some spoon fed fresh of the academic train PhD.
This is a seriously smart guy with the experience to back it up.
Re:CS 101 Questions (Score:1, Insightful)
Son, would you care to place a small wager on that?
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's all here. Mr AC, obvously a thoughtful and experienced engineer, thinks about good design from the ground up, making sure the subsystems are modular and robust and that the entire device is practical. The Microsoft interviewer doesn't give a toss about whether it's stable or not - just whether it has connectivity enough to sync with Outlook.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Former Microsoftie here (Score:3, Insightful)
First, Microsoft interviews are not "How would you move Mt. Fuji?" questions anymore. Microsoft asks hardly ANY of these interview questions anymore.
Second, Microsoft has a recruiting group that works on campus. There are two ways to enter their system. Either, A.) you submit an application, or B.) a recruiter hears about you, and starts selling you to groups, or the group themselves gets a recruiter out to talk to you.
Now, Microsoft has not actually researched how much you know about any particular field, they just know that you studied in it. So, naturally the first they they're going to want to do, is find out if you actually know what you're talking about. The only way to do this is to ask you technical questions.
If they've come after you, you can be sure that they're not looking at you to see if you're an "out of the box" thinker. They don't *need* you to be. If Microsoft contacts you, they have a very good idea of what job they want you to do, and they want to make sure that you know that field, and that you would be able to fit in with the group, and also that you'd be able to handle the work.
If you want a job with a good company, there are some hoops you have to jump through. And just because it lists on your resume that you know XY technology, does not mean that you know it. I mean, COME ON! How many people lie on their resume, and you think they should TRUST it implicitly? They *do* need a short little tech interview to find out if your resume is anywhere near accurate.
I can almost guarentee you that this guy was not asked questiosn like "Why are manhole covers round?"
Re: What a Boring Article (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:1, Insightful)
As far as the guy asking the MCSD questions, chances are it was his first interview, and was more of a practice run for him, rather than a test of your skills.
Re:What happens with many big organizations... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've met more than few PhD's over the years who are so disconnected from reality, due in part to spending most of their adult life in a university, that they need to stay in an ivory tower because they will be useless to you if you are trying to develop and ship a product in the dirty, ugly, nasty, imperfect real world. They apparently nailed the process of getting grades and doing dissertations but some of them start coasting once they have the PhD, and just think "big thoughts". From them on they settle in to the concept they just have to say, look I have a PhD, so I don't really need to do anything to earn the paycheck.
Its a lot easier than you think for people to do a snow job to get through college, and then on references, resumes and interviews so you think they will perform for you and then once you hire them it turns out they don't. If you actually challenge their knowledge though, with something they can't snow you on, that is a good interviewer.
Part of the point of the pop quiz isn't necessarily if they even know the answer. its how they handle the pressure, and if they don't know the answer if they can convince you that they know how to find the answer. This guy handled it by showing he was to f**kin good to even be quizzed. Thank you, don't want you buddy, will call if we need an egotistical opera singer.
When I interview I give pop quizes but they are usally open book or open computer rather. I want to see that the person can find the answer, without having to crutch off the people around them.
If its for a programming job I routinely ask them to find a bug or bugs in a simple program. If you cant do that then you are more con artist than programmer.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's also difficult to imagine where you would obtain the water from. You don't want to have a large reservoir that's out-of-sight (say under the hood near other car fluids), because someone will fill it up and leave the water for a month before making a pot of coffee, accidentally pour anti-freeze into it, or pour poisons into the reservoir when someone parks the car (and of course relatives of the victims will try to blame you for obscuring the danger), or otherwise find a way to make themselves ill or dead. If you add a filter to the source of water, it will need to be easily-accessible for regular replacement and indicate to the owner that it should be changed to avoid ineptitude-induced complaints.
If you put the reservoir inside of the interior, you'll have to fight for space with other dash items. Stereos, safety devices, temperature controls, and so forth. You'll also have to contend with the annoyance of having to bring fresh water to the inside of the automobile in such a way that it's easy to fill the reservoir. If the reservoir holds enough fluid for more than one cup of coffee, customers are going to spill water all over the inside of their car unless you construct some sort of add-on for carrying and filling the reservoir. If you make this device then they'll need a place to store it, so you need to find a place in the car (so that it can be used during road trips) where it can be stored without drastically reducing passenger or storage space.
You need to really worry about how heat will be disposed of, and what neighboring materials will be used to prevent fires or chemical poisoning from heated plastics. You have to make certain that no moving parts of the interior of the car can be positioned in such a manner that they will be heated by the coffee pot. This means things like levers and seats especially.
The console of the car will need to be made resistent to water and vapor. If the user spills an entire pot of hot coffee on the console, you need to be reasonably certain that no damage or fires will result. You can't allow typical vapor exhaust from the heating process to damage CDs or CD players.
To be honest, syncing the coffee pot with your PDA is probably the easiest problem. Once you have a computerized system safely integrated into the car, making it programmable is easy. Integrating it in such a way as to be safe and convenient, now that's the hard part.
Re:MS pre-sales candidate told to lie to customers (Score:1, Insightful)
Let me ask you this . . . suppose that the sales was to a small rural 911 system operator, and you know they don't have their own tech guy to check up on anything. Are you still going to stand silent and present a unified but false image, Lucas ?
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:CS 101 Questions (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:remakes (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MS vs. Google (Score:1, Insightful)
I just went through the interview process myself at both companies and Google is way more arrogant.
At MS it started with an on campus interview with an HR rep.
Then they flew me out to Redmond for a day of interviews.
I started with 3 interviews with 2 groups, but since I was doing well I got two more.
The last interview was with a senior manager. By this point they had clearly decided they wanted me since the interviews became more about convincing me to come to work there, then testing my ability.
MS was tuff, Google was worse.
First there was a phone screening. Then two interviews at the NYC office. Then they flew me out to Mountain View where I had five interviews. When I left Mountain View they told me they would let me know about another round of phone interviews with two senior managers, and a wirting sample. At this point I had an offer from MS and was getting really fed up with jumping through all these hoops.
As it turns out Google's "Employment council" (I kid you not, that's actually what they call it) decided I shouldn't proceed to the next round. So I didn't have that last interview, or the writing sample.
Two thoughts:
Google's hiring philosophy is that it's really hard to get rid of people so they would rather turn away ten well qualified candidates then let one bad one in. This may be pragmatic but if you go through the interviews and don't get the job it seems really arrogant.
Also, while the process is about finding only the best candidates, it also serves as a form of hazing. The more grueling the process the more valuable the reward (a job) seems. Also fostering a feeling that a company's employees are the best of the best is good for moral, even if it makes everyone else think you are arrogant.
agreed (Score:1, Insightful)
However, I will say that the level of horseshit at Google is beyond measure. The thing about Google is everyone that made that place great has already made millions and have moved on to other things so what's left is a bunch of college kids still wet behind the ears who want to pretend they were "part of it".
It's the spoiled rotten kids of the self made millionaire syndrome. Microsoft had it for a while, now Google has it.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Talking about WIFI at the end is just a way of saying, "you forgot to ask me what I want."
This question tests whether you realize that design must be responsive to requirements. Most geeks don't.
Code of ethics (Score:2, Insightful)
We have in our employee handbook clear ethical codes of conduct that include treating our customers in a fair and honest manner. After all, no one wants to feel they were screwed over. This is especially true for companies that actually rely on customers to renew lucrative maintenance contracts and application upgrades on the account of positive experiences.
Having said that, even if your company expected all of you to be honest, disputing your fellow salesperson during their presentation smacks of poor judgement on your part, and a lack of professionalism on the part of your company. By professionalism, I mean the entire briefing should be smoothly run, yet deliver correct information. It is important that the presenter is in control, so establish protocols to interrupt so the salesperson can elect when to pause to speak with you, if it can't wait to the end.
Re:You Kinda Deserved It (Score:1, Insightful)
Given the THREE bits of information: The graph, the code, and the problem.
The point we are all trying to make is that recursion IN THIS SCENARIO reduces:
1) Your overhead (as measured in program execution time).
2) The amount of data stored (per cached node).
3) Memory management issues.
4) The work involved in writing/maintaining the code.
As far as algorithm complexity goes -- big O notation - the two approaches are equivalent. However recursion wins big on implementation and runtime efficiencies.
Linux is nothing more than a convenient readily available example to demonstrate relevant issues.
Sheesh. You can lead a horse to water. But you can't hit them over the head with a clue-by-four.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)
2. Move that mountain.
3. Declare that you have moved Mt. Fuji.
4. Charge everyone as if you have moved the bigger mountain.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:2, Insightful)
By realising the truth. The mountain moves, as does the world it stands on.
There is no spoon.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I think the candidate got it right - if they want a more specific answer, then they need to ask a better question.
Re:Spam (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows Server 2003 is a bloated, unmitigated piece of shit. It's nearly impossible to use because you can't find anything in the hundreds of services, management consoles, menus and dialog boxes, ALL of which have some kind of effect on each other.
It needs to be shrunk about fifty percent to be usable. That would put it somewhere around Linux which is at least comprehensible.
And it's unreliable - it screws up even in an college training lab doing canned exercises. And when it screws up, you can't possibly find out why or where, so a reboot is the only thing that might shake it loose - until the next time - which will be within a few days at most.
And Longhorn promises to be even worse.
More desktop apps for Linux? How many does the average end user actually use? Almost everything the average user is likely to use is already included. How much would the equivalent software COST on Windows? Ten grand? Twenty grand?
What IS needed is more enterprise level apps - which is no problem since the Java tools to build same are becoming available from dozens of open source projects.
RAD tools? RAD tools lead to crap software because design takes a back end to "get the shit out the door". This is WHY Windows is crap - their design practices (and hiring practices which is the point of the discussion) are crap. RealBASIC? Gimme a break. I don't how much you twist and pull BASIC, it's a crap language not intended for serious development work.
Stop cashing those Microsoft propaganda checks and get a clue.