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."
Spam (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like Spam!
Re:Spam (Score:3, Funny)
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
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:Spam (Score:3, Informative)
I'd be willing to gamble Anders didn't have to take the test. And if so, as nothing more than a formality.
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...
(This was the easiest, & involved math, & easiest)
Generally, engine/algorithm I used was/is:
A=1
B=2
(Goal being
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:Spam (Score:5, Funny)
But that's EXACTLY the kind of person Microsoft wants.
A "whiz kid" who can do something clever without thinking about the overall consequences - such as security or even simple common sense.
Somebody who can't threaten Bill's ego or raise issues about system design or corporate behavior they don't want to have to deal with.
None of those tests is really relevant to turning out a well-designed, well-coded and documented system. Maybe if you're doing embedded work in 16K on some microcontroller - or Tiny BASIC back in the 1970's when Bill learned his trade. I'd look for something a lot more conceptual such as how would one handle the documentation of such-and-such a code module.
It's like I've always suspected. Microsoft wants inexperienced whiz kids right out of school or experienced guys who can't think about anything but code.
And it shows in their systems.
Re:Spam (Score:3, Funny)
----
Hey hey, Microsoft's great,
They forcefeed bullshit onto your plate.
You'll be working for Gates, that iconic dude,
Crooked marketer through and through!
Oh oh, you better watch out,
Someone installed IE, so don't you pout.
You've got a job with this mega-firm,
We're spyware enablers from stem to stern!
Hey ho, heed our call,
And then we'll have you by the balls.
Write some shit, there's no remorse,
So long as you attack Open Source!
Yay yah, Microsoft's great!
Come on i
Re:Spam (Score:5, Funny)
Oh yea man, you're in for a real karma spanking posting something like that on Slashdot.
Why is this news? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
mv
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
mv /mnt/fuji /dev/null
If you wanted to get the job with MS, you would have to change that to:
move "C:\Mount Fuji" C:\RECYCLEDRe:Why is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
mv
Would you like to overwrite device file
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Funny)
Not enough free space on
(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Funny)
You can do it with dump/restore if you're worried about holey files and such.
A better answer for the interview (Score:3, Funny)
mv
Wonder what happens when you move Mnt Fuji into Bill's Office....
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
The original answer is still correct in that case.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Informative)
Instead, be prepared to talk about past experiences and how you've handled various job
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: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: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.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
To: Car Coffee Maker
From: Me
Subject: Work
Dear Coffee Machine,
I plan on leaving for work at 6:15AM tomorrow. Please have 4 cups of Breakfast Blend prepared just prior to my departure.
Regards,
Me
The correct answer is (Score:3, Funny)
Well.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Informative)
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
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.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
I would use a static warp shell to lower its mass in this inertial frame of reference and then pick it up.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Funny)
1. Open the refrigerator door
2. Put Mt. Fuji in the refrigerator
3. Close the refrigerator door
4. Move the refrigerator
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
On second thought, Mt. Fuji is still somewhat active, might be best to have them sign a disclaimer, in case they are lavanated.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:5, Funny)
2) Announce that the competition will never be able move mount fuji and that once you move mount fuji there is a real chance they will go out of business.
3) Announce that since you will move mount fuji any day now it makes no sense to buy anything from a competitor.
4) Announce that you will not be moving all of mount fuji just "the important parts"
5) Announce that you have already moved part of mount fuji and show the press a bucket of dirt.
6) Get a truckload of dirt from mount fuji, dump it in redmond and proudly announce that you have successfully moved mount fuji.
7) Keep claiming that MS has moved mount fuji and that it's the most innovative and amazing thing ever done by anybody anywhere. Pay ZDNET lots of money to repeat that announcement five times a day for six months.
8) Voila! MS has moved mount fuji, anybody who claims otherwise is a communist, hippie, terrorist.
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Interesting)
(That's how I got my free vacation to Mt. Fuji.)
Re:Why is this news? (Score:3, Funny)
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:)
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:Why is this news? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Move Mt. Fugi? (Score:3, Funny)
Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:3, Insightful)
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: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: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.
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:3, Informative)
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 flunke
I'd side with people who RTFA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:4, Interesting)
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....
Re:Not that I'd ever side with MS... (Score:4, Funny)
I had an interview like that once. The guy asked me of my degree was from a "real school or one of those diploma-by-mail outfits".
Many years later I got to sit on a committee that was going to evaluate a purchase of a product his company had built. This was a major purchase and I made damn sure he knew who I was and I made him sweat blood.
Damn - that felt good!!!!!
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).
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 ins
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: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: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: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: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:4, Informative)
Why take it as an insult? Perhaps the interviewer is forced to ask the question regardless of the candidate. It could also just be a test of arrogance, sometimes in the real world you're asked to do jobs that you might consider beneath you. Don't think a manager wants an employee that says "PhD's don't fill out TPS reports"
Besides if it's an easy question just answer and move on.
Morons do not get PhD's.
No, but people with no practical knowledge sometimes do. At least in physical sciences you can spend your graduate career focused on theory and similuation, without any actual hands-on experimentation. I'm assuming CS might have something similar where stuff is just described on paper with no actual coding done.
And no hand holding will get you that far.
There are some PhD's who just do what their professor tells them, that's what I mean by hand holding. Doesn't mean the person getting the degree is stupid, they've just never had to think creatively.
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: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: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: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-ho
Well... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Funny)
Counter Stike Degree? (Score:4, Funny)
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?
Best Interview Question Ever (Score:5, Funny)
"How on earth could you ever work for Microsoft, the big evil company??"
Probably the best question I've ever been asked in an interview.
Re:Best Interview Question Ever (Score:4, Funny)
And your answer was... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Best Interview Question Ever (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:What happens with many big organizations... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
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."
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: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
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.
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.
Maybe they're desperate? (Score:3, Funny)
He got an email asking for an interview.
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?
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.
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:MS pre-sales candidate told to lie to customers (Score:5, Interesting)
Similar(ish) experience at IBM (Score:3, Informative)
A few weeks after telling IBM that they did not want the job, they got letters telling them that their offers had been withdrawn as they had failed to achieve 2:1's (type of British honours degree).
However, both of them had managed to get this grade of degree, just decided IBM wasn't for them. If it had happened once I would have figured it was a mistake, but twice seems to me that their personnel system can't cope with the fact that people may actually turn down a job with them, and a form letter is sent out by their bureaucracy.
Microsoft Interview (Score:5, Informative)
Their phone interview process was a good mix of explaining what it is they were doing and how I could help, and making sure that I was the right mix of skills and cleverness to fit in with the group.
I passed that round, and was invited to Redmond to interview in person. I found the whole on-site interview process to be a lot of fun -- I'd heard that the interview process was gruelling, painful, challenging, etc... but I thought it was fun. And shortly thereafter, they offered me the position.
Fully half the time I've spent talking to Microsoft has been on the topic of what they have to offer me, and it was considerable.
In the end, I decided not to relocate to Redmond, mainly because I wanted to finish up my BS (three semesters to go at the time, now one more), which I'd been working on part time for eight years, while working as a software engineer.
So I guess in the end, if you don't enjoy that kind of interview, maybe you're not really qualified, despite your education. There are plenty of places where all the cleverness in the world is worthless, but the skills required to earn that PhD are essential (I can't imagine working in an evironment like that... but hey, each unto their own).
Personally, I found the whole experience to be very positive, and if after I finish my BS, the PhD doesn't work out, I might be taking that permanent trip to Redmond after all.
-brian
Re:Microsoft Interview (Score:3, Interesting)
Isn't that an oxymoron? To get a Ph.D. from any reputable university, you have to develop a novel concept that advances the state of the art and rigorously verify its correctness through experiment and peer-reviewed publication. If you aren't clever, you can't get the novelty aspect and don't get past the preliminary oral exam because you don't have any publications.
Now that's something to boast about (Score:5, Funny)
It's easy when Microsoft offers them exorbitant wages of 40 Rupees an hour!
Memo to Bill Gates... (Score:3, Informative)
If you insist on importing massive numbers of H1B visa applicants and paying them slave-labor wages to write code, you'll eventually reap the fruits of this policy. If you insist on outsourcing software development to third world countries just to save a few bucks on developer's salaries, you'll eventually get what's coming to you.
The IT industry as a whole has been guilty of this. All of the big players: Microsoft, Cisco, Sun, and IBM have taken part in the outsourcing craze and now they act surprised when college students don't want to study IT for fear of being outsourced.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Want cheap labor? Fine, you can have it, but after you've laid off all the highly paid US developers and decimated the IT industry, don't expect to be able to find talented individuals to manage your cutrate 3rd world development teams.
Re:PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:4, Informative)
Re:PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:3, Funny)
Answer = xor, right?
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 se
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:4, Informative)
u32 vote32(u32 x, u32 y, u32 z) {
return (x & y) | (y & z) | (x & z);
}
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: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 a
Re:PhD in CS is WAY overrated (Score:4, Funny)
#include <cmath>
using namespace std;
DWORD Vote (DWORD storedvalue[3])
{
DWORD result = 0;
for (int i = 31; i >= 0; i--)
{
int votes = 0;
for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
{
DWORD temp = storedvalue[j];
temp = temp / pwr(2,i);
temp = temp % pwr(2,i);
if (temp == pwr(2,i))
votes++;
}
if (votes >= 2)
result = result + pwr(2,i);
}
return result;
}
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: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.
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: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 y
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: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, w