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."
Why is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen plenty of 60-year-old PhD's who hadn't produced anything for 30 years. Before hiring anyone, I think it's fair to ask them some interview questions.
Methinks his response is sour grapes because he no longer has the mind he once had when he did his phd studies and flunked their interview.
On the other hand, I agree with his comments about MSFT arrogancy --- back in the day when MSFT stock was doubling every few months I could see how they could be pretty selective about attracting top tallent. At the time they earned the right to be arrogant Now all MSFT has to offer is a lot of hard work in a stressful environment working on technology that no-one wants to work on (as inconcevable to linux developers as this may sound, did you realize they have to pay people to work on Windows!!!)
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:4, Interesting)
MS vs. Google (Score:5, Interesting)
It's only one anecdotal data point, but it does suggest a simple fact of life. Success breeds arrogance whether a company is "evil empire" or seeks to "do no evil."
What this says about Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately typical of a company that is and/or thinks like a monopoly. There isn't very good business practice in just being arrogant (in the midst of well-known bugs in your own software especially!) and I don't think I know anyone who would want to work for a company that behaved in such a way -- not a professional image I'd want to be associated with!
Among the charges leveled at Gates, Ballmer and crew: Job candidates have been turned off by Microsoft arrogance...But he is one of many observers within and outside of Redmond who's raising questions about the way the company recruits and retains its work force
Reading the article reminded me of what I've heard about Google employees. I can't see Google leaving much room to be arrogant when they allow their employees to spend part of their work time on their own personal projects. I certainly don't hear this about Google and I think they are very good reasons why.
Of course, Microsoft, which is seeking to defend its turf in operating systems while expanding into newer areas such as desktop search, isn't alone in facing a tougher climate when it comes to competing for employees.
When you've got Desktop Search really being pioneered by Google in addition to their excellent search engine I'm sure if I was choosing a company to develop for I'd be choosing the one that was doing well from the get-go regardless of who was around longer. I'd rather go on with company that does real innovation and I'm sure that's why all these other individuals aren't signing on board.
I'd side with people who RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Unsolicited invitation... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorkin, who holds a PhD in CS, withdrew his application.
The phrase "his application" seems to imply that he applied for the job, the first job mentioned in the article. Unless you can somehow "apply" for a job you were invited into, maybe I'm missing something...
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:3, Interesting)
They have no real projects, assignments nor are they developing any real skills for their next resume. Whose fault is it that the PHD grad gets mad?? You be the judge.
Re:Spam (Score:3, Interesting)
First, on the phone, MS folks' asked me alot of questions on the phone about string processing & string lists (limitations, how to use them, etc.) which got me past step #1...
Because, mainly iirc, that was round #1...
Then, via email, they sent me an ACTUAL test to take, which had only 3 questions on it, the first 2 I got right I am fairly sure:
1.) How to swap two variables (numeric) w/out using the (what I call it) "Father, Son, & Holy Ghost" technique of 3 variable placeholders...
They would not allow you that!
(This was the easiest, & involved math, & easiest)
Generally, engine/algorithm I used was/is:
A=1
B=2
(Goal being A=2, & B=1, w/out using C as temp var)
B=A+B (3)
A=B-A (3-1 = 2, first swap complete)
B=B-A (3-2=1, second swap complete)
2.) The second, was how to find the midpoint of an array, without knowing its total number of elements!
(This is simple enough, with 2 pointers, one always being DOUBLE the size of the other, both starting @ 1 of course... Eventually, & when the 2nd can no longer advance? The first is @ the midpoint of the array, & without knowing how many elements in the array!)
* And, since they said there were apparently OTHER possibles? They wanted the MOST EFFICIENT & BEST ANSWERS from any candidates!
So, I thought I'd "impress them" by writing the questions answers out in 3 diff. languages (C, VB, & Delphi Object Pascal), but... no dice apparently!
AND, 3rd question was SO friggin' hard?
I did NOT get it imo...
Heh, in fact, it was SO hard imo, that my mind wouldn't even let me recall it here in fact!
(Guess I blocked it out (probably outta shame, lol, in my own mind for NOT knowing the answer to it)).
Needless to say? I didn't make it past the 3rd level of the interviews...
This, however, told me ALOT about Microsoft & the type of talent they've got & are willing to pay for:
The likes of (one of my 'intellectual/technical heroes' in fact!
Particularly, in Mr. Anders Heijelsberg, whom "King Billy" purchased from Borland outright, & who is responsible for iirc, Turbo Pascal and FOR SURE, the excellence that is Delphi/Kylix (my fav tools))... MS regularly "brain-drains" Borland I have heard over time.
I mean, who's next? Chuck Andrzewski?? (Co-designer of Delphi)
Anders Heijelsberg (sp?) again, is PARTICULARLY outstanding in this field imo!
He holds the 'distinguished engineer' title, which only 15 others @ MS hold!
AND, he did it QUICKLY, in like 2-3 years time to get that title & IS the reason largely for what you are seeing as improvements in Visual Studio's latest &
(Much of it VERY "Delphi like" (VB data containers anyone? Been there for YEARS in Delphi!))
Even the other MS 'whizkids' speak worlds & highly of him saying "his design skills are WAY above the norm!"
(He & John Carmack are, imo, the 'best & brightest out there' now, @ least of those in the spotlight)
Back on track though, enough "hero worship" (sorry guys, I am NOT above that, admiring others as people to look up to):
MS gets the VERY best. I shouldn't have tried for that level of work imo, but I went pretty far into that process... I wasn't "let down" (well, a bit, it was humbling because sometimes you get caught up in thinking you're better than you are)... I only learned I have to learn more is all!
* Heck, some of the guys who reply here (like Mr. John Carmack)? In some of their replies, just BLOW ME AWAY, & I know it... just on their quality of reply output & technical knowledge & imaginative brilliance applying it...
ESPECIALLY IN THE DEVELOPERS SECTION HERE!
APK
This is actually... (Score:3, Interesting)
More times than not, a PhD who has applied at the company will get the test and complain loudly that they don't have time to fill the test out. Which is simply code for arrogance on their part or a lack of understanding of what is important in "the real world."
As far as quizzing onsite, the fact of the matter is that if you are good at what you do and are in it because you like it, pop quizzes are fun, not a reason to think of your employers as arrogant. When I was grilled for 7 hours at my current place of employment, the thought that was going through my head wasn't "wow, these assholes are arrogant." It was "wow, these guys are all totally brilliant. I definitely want to be surrounded by coworkers that are as smart as them." When the offer letter came, I accepted in a heartbeat.
Re:I'd side with people who RTFA (Score:1, Interesting)
Not to come to be given a job.
Since he was asked to come to an interview, it's perfectly appropriate for him to expect to be interviewed.
MS pre-sales candidate told to lie to customers (Score:5, Interesting)
After the interview I heard back from Microsoft and was told that they wouldn't give me the job as my answer showed I wasn't prepared to back up their sales techniques. I was amazed. Basically they wanted me, as a pre-sales consultant, to lie to prospective customers about the capabilities of MS software. I've been in situations before where I've had to dig my company out of sour deals where salesmen have lied to customers about products they're buying, and it ain't nice. Too hear that MS do this shouldn't have been a suprise, but to hear it officially certainly changed my mind about working for them.
Re:We're so cool, let's bash Microsoft some more! (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft asked a guy interview questions.
I expect he objected to the unprofessionalism. I mean it is one thing to ask an expert in a given field in, then ask him questions about how well he would fit into a given role. It is quite another to give him a generic quiz, likely written by people with much less competence than he. Asking questions is fine, but the implication of incompetence in giving a generic quiz is quite another. If a large company is that impersonal and indiscriminate when hiring, what other stupid bureaucratic procedures would an employee have to deal with? I would not walk out of a job because I am given a quiz, but I might if it was a quiz that did not really apply to the type of job I would expect to be working on.
Think of it this way. You're a nationally renowned chemist and DOW asks you to interview for a position. When you arrive they give you a test asking the atomic number of something and how you would centrifuge a sample of something. It entirely discounts your accomplishments to date. Obviously you know the basics or you would never have been able to do all you have done. It could be very insulting and good warning sign of a bureaucracy run amok.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was *supposed* to be thinking about how I could link the coffee machine to the a wireless network so I could sync it with my WiFi alarm clock and e-mail program, said the interviewer.
Re:MS vs. Google (Score:1, Interesting)
They definitely ask quizzy questions too - their first phone screener asked a reasonably obvious space-time tradeoff question, a memorize your powers of two question, and a question on relative speeds of common computer operations.
The phone interview I had asked about how to solve a problem they face in their production environment, and was really geared to see if you understand the concept of automation from the point of view not only of automating tasks, but designing a process that confirms operations and states before commiting changes to the environment as well as monitors for ill-effects afterwards.
They haven't come off as arrogant yet - maybe a bit "detached" - less interest in who I am and how I might fit than many other places I've interviewed.
Re:PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:1, Interesting)
You've got triple redundant storage but have simultaneous access to all of the bits to compare them?
What's up here- is this three hard drives in one box (ouch!), or every time you want the data do you really not care about paying for the bandwidth and latency to move the entire file from the remote sites to local storage for comparison?
What's the matter with just voting on a checksum or hash of the whole file (since most of the time, all three backups should agree and you'll save lots of data movement if you compute the hashes locally to each backup)?
To get the detailed answers you seem to be looking for, you might be better off describing the problem as three real-time instrument feeds measuring the same boolean experimental condition at each time step (bit).
Re:Spam (Score:4, Interesting)
These are the computing equivalents of the sorts of tricks you keep on hand for bar bets... [askmen.com]
You know, it's really hard to hire people. but testing them on recall of something out of the CS Grad's Standard Toolkit is perfectly fine, if you want to know if they're loaded and ready to roll, but it's kind of a dumb way to figure out if you'd want to hire them. Three questions of this nature and that's it? I'd be insulted.
spoiler alert, but oh my god this is one of the oldies...
bitwise:
A = A xor B
B = A xor B
A = A xor B
and you've swapped the values.
Wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org]
Re:MS pre-sales candidate told to lie to customers (Score:5, Interesting)
Move Mt. Fugi? (Score:2, Interesting)
I love technical challenges - the harder the better, but the idea of moving Mt. Fuji offends me so much that I have trouble even thinking about it.
No doubt I'd fail the interview because my answer would have to be, "You shouldn't even joke about moving Mt. Fuji!"
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:5, Interesting)
The interview was a full day affair, with very few breaks. They said in the AM that I may or may not be finished at lunch, basically - they said that if I was a total idiot then they wouldn't waste anyone's time after lunch.
All of the interviews involved writing code on a whiteboard in various languages. The code was reviewed for syntactical correctness as well as logical.
The first interviewer was really cool - she asked me to mock-up a battleship simulation in C# and laughed at me as I did a very bleary-eyed OOP model in C# of the Game object, the Player object etc... when really what she was after was the validation logic for putting the ships on the board - ensure they are in bounds and don't hit other ships etc... to me that seemed completely worthless - I mean that just an algorithm you would work out and tweak, the important stuff is your class structure.... but I digress.
I walked out of that interview feeling pretty good until I got in the next one. It was horrible - the interviewer was very arrogant and rude and had a thick accent which made him difficult to understand. He would ask me a question, and sit and roll his eyes as I was answering and check his email - basically communicating clearly to me that he didn't like me, want me there or want to be talking to me. For a code sample, he asked me to write code in C# (on a whiteboard) that would traverse a tree of nodes and print out the values in order of all nodes at an arbitrary level. So I wrote a recursive function that would do what he wanted, and that would work just fine. He didn't like that way I had written it, and demanded that I rewrite it "more efficiently". I stood there for like 20 mins feeling like a total idiot because I couldn't figure out what he was talking about, until he got mad and said I should be using "queues" and that it would be more efficient. I had no idea what he was talking about and told him, and he came up and tried to explain that I could have used a FIFO queue - but looking at his example, I didn't understand how his approach would have been any more efficient than mine - when I asked him this, he just got angrier and said it was. Suffice to say, that interview didn't go so well. I realized as soon as I was done with him that I wasn't going to get the job, so I resolved to just have some fun and enjoy the rest of the day. As an interesting footnote, I kept thinking about the question, and a couple days later I did find a much more efficient way of doing it, but it had nothing to do with queues, and it would have been much faster than either of the methodologies we had discussed. I damn near emailed him the better solution, but figured "Whats the point?" Ah well, like I say I was not at my best.
My next interview was with a guy who asked me a different technical question involving organizational hierarchies. I was lucky in that interview because I had written a budget system for a bank that used a similar structure, so I had found a very clever solution to the exact problem he asked me. When I explained my whiteboard code, he got a "damn this guy is good" look in his eye, so I felt pretty good coming out of that one.
Next was a lunch interview, a guy who that said would be my "peer" took me to lunch and asked me a bunch of questions while I was eating. The questions he asked were ridiculous, I mean stuff straight out of the MCSD Analyzing Solutions test. Seriously, I'm pretty sure he pulled a couple test questions before our lunch interview. He would ask me something, and I would answer him with a couple ways that I had solved the problem in the real world, and then he would say "no, that's no the answer, the answer is Scalability, Maintainability, Performance and....
How I moved Mt. Fuji (Score:5, Interesting)
Ascended Fuji. I was #2 in the group to reach summit.
Assembled the instrument. Splitting headache from the ascent.
I played "Amazing Grace" and "Morag of Dunvegan" looking down into the crater.
The mountain was moved.
For 500 yen, a fellow lit off a blowtorch and stamped the foot of the chanter (a hard-plastic Dunbar-Eller) with some Kanji that say "Top of the Hill, 3220m" IIRC.
Trying to play the instrument at that elevation qualifies as full-on stupid, but WTF, it's braggin' rights on
Re:MS vs. Google (Score:3, Interesting)
(That said, I must admit that one frequently seems to quickly lead to the other...in either direction.)
People who work for MS aren't necessarily arrogant, but this doesn't mean that the organization itself isn't arrogant.
OTOH, MOST organizations that I've looked to work for have been arrogant. They've felt that I must prove myself to them, and that they didn't need to prove themselves to me. (This is a kind of arrogance centered around perceived power rather than "We're better than they are", or the other kinds. I think it's worse.)
For that matter, it's practically impossible to be more arrogant than the IRS, even though they are known to make frequent errors. It's generally impossible for an outsider to successfully challenge them, and if you do, they are likely to punish you in succeeding years with extra audits. Few companies are that arrogant (or have that kind of power).
Arrogance does breed downfall, but not quickly. Not unless there is lots of thirsty competition.
Google does the same thing too (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, the job market is heating up this year. Simply putting a resume in your home page might get you a few unsolicited recruiter spam.
Re:MS vs. Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Eventually, the executive board decided not to waive the GPA requirement for him, and they ended up not hiring the guy who the group themselves thought was as good as you could get for the job.
Any company that doesn't listen to their group, which is fighting to hire a guy, are absolute morons.
Re:But it's really your personality they're assess (Score:4, Interesting)
And they stopped asking me weird puzzles when they asked me what sort of software development work I had done and I started talking about some of my AI experiments....
But two things: Most of the managers who interviewed me were clueless about technical fields. Again this may not be representative of Microsoft or even PSS, but perhaps just my department.
The one interview I had that was really good was an informational interview for a possible Services for UNIX support position that never materialized.
Also when I say "play politics" I mean in the sense of managers saying "Great to see you contributing to Microsoft as a whole" right up until the review and then using your contributions to other departments against you at that point (despite the fact that you met or exceeded all of your goals). My experience there was not unique, as I have heard from many other employees who have had similar things happen to them.
My contributions to Microsoft were often highly visible and well above my level (53). Yet, they actually kept me from being promoted. A few of my contributions (in supporting roles) were:
1) Introducing and championing the idea that Exchange would never compete with Sendmail because the email and groupware markets were substantially separate. This eventually lead to the addition of a POP3 server in Server 2003. Steve Wasko pushed this project through.
2) Introducing the idea that Services for UNIX should be displated at Linuxworld. Paul Cayley (sp?) agreed to provide the additional funding for more display space for this.
The above seem quite obvious, but you would be surprised...
Additionally I provided consulting time to competitive managers regarding how Linux, Samba, and other open source products would actually be used in a real environment.
There are several other ideas I pushed in the competitive circles which have not yet been implimented so I won't comment on them here except to say that the I pushed very heavily the idea of introducing telnet servers and clients into SFU which could use Kerberos to encrypt the session (OpenSSH is omitted from this product due to patent liability concerns).
The problem is that MS's interviewing problems are part of a larger unresolved issue... And I used to work at Microsoft, so it is not that I was too snobish to go through the interview process, but simply that I found it largely a waste of time.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Interesting)
(That's how I got my free vacation to Mt. Fuji.)
Re:Microsoft Interview (Score:3, Interesting)
If you mean slave away long hours on a single project, I fail to see how that skill is unique to Ph.Ds. Actually, the majority of the ones I know are lazy bums until the deadline comes. :)
I will say this, though. I'd be a little offended if I was subjected to nine consecutive technical quizzes (as from TFA) while carrying a Ph.D. I understand a few open-ended questions to see if a person can think creatively and prove they aren't an anti-social prick. Maybe a few technical questions with distinct solutions to check their background. However, I would get really tired, really quickly if they spent more time toying around than asking me about my research.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't speak for "every single slashdotter" only for myself, but my issues with microsoft actually have very little to do with problems with their software.
I'm much more troubled by their monopolistic business practices, restrictive EULAs, pandering to media companies with DRM schemes, outright lies about how invasive and useless Passport was going to be, embrace/extend/extinguish, H1-B abuse, very large donations to political parties, filing for a zillion patents on obvious extentions to existing technology, underhanded support of the BSA and probably SCO, FUDmongering, outright declaration of war on GNU/linux/FOSS, and probably 14 other things I can't think of right now.
I really don't care if IE or XP is buggy. I never use either one of them. I get zombies attacking my firewall and tons of email about my "account violations suspended please see attachment for deatails" but that's just annoying, not immoral.
Re:Spam (Score:4, Interesting)
A = A xor B
B = A xor B
A = A xor B
This will work for any values of A and B as long as the two registers have the same number of bits.
Re:MS pre-sales candidate told to lie to customers (Score:1, Interesting)
I bet you go to Church also. Let me guess . . . Catholic ? I'm guessing Catholic because your ilk likes to use the work "heirarchy" like it's a good thing.
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:why manhole covers are round, really (Score:5, Interesting)
The real reason manhole covers are round reflects late 19th century manufacturing technology. In the late 19th century, casting worked fine, but the only power tools were lathes, planers, and steam hammers. Milling machines and welders were in the future.
Given that toolset, a round manhole cover is an easy thing to make - cast, chuck in lathe, finish machine in one setup. A manhole cover ring, which needs a little finish machining to clean up the inside of the ring, is also straightforward. Simple, cheap, and suitable for volume production.
Making a rectangular plate with 1890s technology is harder than making a round one. It would probably require four passes through a power planer, which is a more expensive machine than a lathe. Making a rectangular manhole frame with that toolset is really tough. You can't use a lathe to do the finish machining. It's tough to get a planer into the inside of a rectangle. You'd need a specialized planer with a long reach, and it would take at least four setups to do the job, probably eight to get into each corner from both directions. Today, you'd cut four straight sections and weld the parts together, which is how rectangular frames are made today. But that option didn't exist in 1890.
Take a look at a steam locomotive from that era. All big metal parts consist of cast surfaces, flat machined surfaces, circular machined surface. Anything else was really difficult to make.
You Kinda Deserved It (Score:5, Interesting)
However, had you recalled Breadth-First-Search, you'd realize that with a queue you could traverse the the tree one level at a time, starting with the root and adding all children found on each level. This explicitly stores in queue the information you implicitly programmed in the recursion. It requires more thinking, but it saves the costly recursive calls, which can pile up very quickly if you're searching an unbalanced tree. You were lazy and neglected algorithmic analysis for the easy recursive solution and got rightly burned for it. This may have happened because you were tired, and that's certainly understandable, but this is early CS/basic algorithms material, and if I was your interviewer I'd also be concerned (but less of a dick about it).
Re:why manhole covers are round, really (Score:3, Interesting)
When you design a cast metal part, you have to make sure the molten metal will reach all the corners. The easiest thing to cast is a sphere; the hardest is something with thin parts sticking off. It's probably easier to cast round manhole covers with a lower reject rate.
Also, sewer and storm drain manholes are generally shaped like big bottles. A skinny neck to enter through, and a large body to work inside. Given a round neck, wouldn't it be awkward to attach a square frame? (Power and phone manholes are usually rectangular, with short round necks supporting the mh cover frame.)
And also, a precast manhole may be installed at an angle to the center line of a street. The round cover disguises this, but a square cover would look odd if rotated from the CL.
Re:why manhole covers are round, really (Score:2, Interesting)
Here in the UK manhole covers are no longer round.
They are square and split diagonally. Yes they can fall down the manhole, although the two halfs are loosely bolted together and Yes they are a real bugger to get back out again.
I know I have built enough sewer lines. The round neck is usually covered in a flat slab with a square hole in it. On that, between 2 and 4 courses of bricks are laid and then the frame is cemented on, into which goes the cover.
The cover slab can generally be twisted enough to line everything up with the kerb so as not to look too odd. Generyll speaking the most important thing about cover placement in a road is to avoid placing the cover directly under the tyres of most cars. So they will normally try to place them in the middle of the lane. This reduces the amount of impact damage the manhole sustains and probably avoids vehicles slipping on the metal covers.