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Microsoft's Personnel Puzzle
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."
They found his comments on Slashdot.
"unsolicited invitation to interview"
Sounds like Spam!
There is an entire book called "How Would You Move Mount Fuji?" about Microsoft style interviews. It even gives a list of their favorite questions, and is a must read for anyone who intends to interview there.
...but, isn't it arrogant of him to think himself above any kind of proficiency test? Does he think he's perfect and should be hired with no showing of his actual ability?
When was the last time the Borg asked if they could assimilate you?
internet like monkeys'
Haven't we had like 20,000 stories in the past few years about either Microsoft's use of puzzles in job interviews or other companies using puzzles as well.
Why is the happening to one person news or even, dare I say it, "Stuff that matters?"
They just representin'. Gotta keep gettin' them mad props or no one on the street will respect 'em.
HIRE ME!
I don't care if you ask about my momma, my momma's momma, or what. Tease my brain. Quiz me. Just give me a decent paying tech job.
We all bash on MS, but truth be told, most of us would take a job there if the price was right. Right now my price is low, haha.
Jay | http://oldos.org
Eat that Redmond!
Must be one hell of a player!
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
Well, to be fair I would certainly want to test the practical knowledge of a PhD before hiring. I've run into many a CS degree holder who was absolutely worthless when it came to developing usable software. That said, he should have at least been warned of the test.
Look out for those anti-personnel mines, or, should that be anti-personnel minds :)
If somebody is sending you an unsolicited invitation for a job, then yes, you are above a profiency test. They invited you. Their goal should be to get you to take the job they are offering you.
There's a difference between you asking them for a job and them asking you if you want a job.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
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.
I'm teminally incoherent
What?!?! They actually wanted to test his skills? The nerve! Oh the arrogance.
Did they not know he holds an almighty PhD and thus is proficient in all Programming languages known to man, not to mention all CS areas Microsoft could ever be interested in?
Bow before him for he holds a certification!
As Dilbert would say:
I summon the vast power of certification!!!
This seems to imply Microsoft is doing something bad by quizing potential employees. I have no problem with testing people, even if their credentials are amazing. While Sorkin received an unsolicited invitation, he accepted it! After the 'arrogant pop-quiz' he withdrew his application. Who cares. Instead of proving himself, he withdrew his application. Sorkin is being arrogant as well.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Just respond the answer to all your problems is Linux.
This should be Bad News for Microsoft, because in the end, any software product is first and foremost a reflection of what's in the mind of the developer. If you're hiring 2nd tier minds, you get 2nd tier software.
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?
I had an interview for a co-op marketing position with Microsoft. The interview went well, I was getting along with the interviewers and we were have a good conversation, and then they asked me the last question......
"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.
posting AC....
Microsoft also displays a (surprising in my view) amount of arrogance with it's "Partner" companies. I'm a research engineer at a very large chip company and have been invited many times to internal dog and pony shows where Microsoft presents future plans and projects (such as Avalon and Indigo for Longhorn).
This assumption that everyone wants to work for Microsoft that was mentioned in the article was also very evident to me in this venue. They believe that everyone wants to use Microsoft's approaches and products, just because it is Microsoft who is backing it.
Now that may have been true in the 1995-1999 era, but it certainly isn't today, seems many of the upper management is living in the past or is shielded from reality.
Ok, they gave him a technical pop quiz. And what is the problem with this?
I have yet to go on a job interview where I do not get a set of questions, some designed to gauge whether I knew what I purpoted to know, and other to gauge my problem solving skills. What does this guy expect? For them to simply look at how straight his tie is? For them to simply say how much money they were going to offer?
If there was absolute certainty about whether the candidate was qualified for the job, the interview would be skipped. Given that I've graduated from college in 98 just in time for the boom, I've seen many people take jobs for granted, but the idea of taking offence at a pop quiz takes the cake...
I interviewed with Microsoft right before graduating. It wasn't so much an interview as a series of logic puzzles and code sample writing. The interviewer didn't even give me his name so I had to ask when the whole thing was over. Not impressed.
in fact, I've passed it three times, and turned MSFT down two of the times as I didn't feel the job was a good fit.
It's quite puzzling, really - and about as useful as handwriting analysis or tea leaf reading.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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")
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The real reason for MS's interest resides in a careful review of Dr. Sorkin's resume:
>CERTIFICATIONS
>Registered Patent Agent 28270.
The subject of software patents has again raised its ugly head.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
I had a friend who had a perfect quote for this sort of thing. "The left hand doesn't know which foot the right is shooting." It's an IPC failure. A "recruitment process" is designed to find good people. These are then handed off to a "hiring process", which begins with an "interview process". Unfortunately, the "interview process" recieves input from both recruitment *and* people walking in off the street. It's geared for weeding out the in-off-the-street group until all that's left is good people. That process doesn't know to act differently when fed a diet of people who are already known to be qualified, but aren't as desparate for a job as the street crowd.
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.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
I remember touring the Microsoft headquarters in Redmond (I was young, okay?) and one of the people who was speaking to our group mentioned how the interviewer she had was considerably more interested in hearing that the she had a mother with Diabetes rather than technological prowess. Another person who was speaking to us said that he received a similar interview process, and it all came down to a question about moving a certain amount of water using a single 5-gallon bucket. The question was so obscure I can hardly even remember the details.
Don't bother me, Microsoft. You are monopolistic predators. The only way I'll work for you is if I get root privileges, so I can run "fdisk" and "format" on your ass.
I'm sorry, but why should M$ or any company have to sell the job to a prospective candidate? The job market is still fairly tight in comparison with the last 5 years, companies are being more picky than ever before.
At the company I work for, we've interviews serveral PhD candidates and to brutally honest they've been amongst some of the worst candidates. We've even had candidates that claimed to be lecturers at some fairly well known institutions yet when asked basic questions on their own subjects they completely failed to answer the questions correctly.
We get a number of engineers that come into interviews with an air of smugness about themselves but seriously don't know Jack even if you were to introduce them to Jack, Jack's family and Jack's friends who all brought along their photo albums of Jack and then gave a speech on how Jack had touched their lives.
Bottom line, nobody is above scrutiny and things on paper in reality count for little, experience counts for everything. Like I said earlier, I've seen many PhD candidates (and I'm not knocking people with PhD's, we have quite a few of them here at the company already) who would have difficulty just handling basic day to day tasks...their qualifications were in effect a useless indicator.
The son of a colleague interviewed with both Google and MS and got job offers from both companies. He took the MS job because he felt the Google folks were more arrogant than the MS folks. The Google folks were quite shocked that he turned them down.
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."
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
as opposed to say, Google's?
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
The issue has come to the fore in part because of comments made this month by internal Microsoft recruiter Gretchen Ledgard, who blasted some of her company's managers as "entitled, spoiled whiners" who assume that everyone wants to work for Microsoft.
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.
to be able to get pissy when potential employers decide to quiz us after tracking down our CVs!
Nope, it's not news.
Neither is the fact that MS is lobbying the govt. to ease visa restrictions.
(That was news a while ago.)
How is this a troll! The icon is Gates of the Borg....
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
Looks like Microsoft thinks they're Google now.
I'd feel better about it if I trusted the proficiency test.
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.
While reading the article something just came to my mind.
"The issue has come to the fore in part because of comments made this month by internal Microsoft recruiter Gretchen Ledgard, who blasted some of her company's managers as "entitled, spoiled whiners" who assume that everyone wants to work for Microsoft."
This made me realize something that apparently is obvious, but many of us haven't thought about. Microsoft people DO THINK they're the best. I don't know about it, but I've seen in some big corps playing videotapes to new recruits to show them how good they are (aka brainwashing). So, after a few of these, they end up believing it.
Now, I want to ask anyone who has worked for microsoft: Is this the case? Does Microsoft sell itself to new workers by playing self-promotional videos?
Will /. Microsoft obsession ever stop?
who cares about their hiring practices, and what does this have to do with oss?
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
He didn't ask for the interview with them; they asked him to come to an interview. If somebody asks me to come for an interview, I'd damn well be pissed to have to explain to them why they asked me to come in.
Infuriate left and right
Maybe they take the fact that he showed for an interview showed that he was interested in the company and the job. And I don't know of a company that even when they actively recruit candidates for job opening, doesn't interview them before they make a decision to hire them, and the interview is so the company can further assess the the quality of the candidate.
Okay now this is just stupid. I know I'm going to be marked as a troll for this, but come on! Microsoft asked a guy interview questions. Oh the horror. It's almost as if it were... a job interview! Like it was.
This is what companies do, people. You don't just hand people a job. It doesn't matter who they are. They're job interviews. They didn't call him up and say, "We want to give you this job," they called him up and said, "We want you to interview for this job." There's a difference.
This is truly pathetic when we bash the "evil empire" for quizzing a job applicant. Everybody does it. Let's get some real news on here.
that a company with such great reputation for innovative ideas, fair competive practices, and flawlessly written software is having such a difficult time recruiting talent.
Note: I am being sarcastic. Put down that chair
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Being the largest software company in the world, they have every right to do what it takes to weed out the thousands of people who submit resumes and interview there each year. If logic puzzles and code writing disgust you, try being grilled for an hour by a guy who doesn't give two shits about you just to see if you have it in you to stick with your gameplan. In addition, Sorkin sounds like he just has a bad attitude. You have to prove yourself in this world. Nothing is free.
Uhm, I was given a quiz, asked to design en edge detector circuit, and asked to draw s small VLSI layout by my current employer during my interview.
I've gotten calls a few times over the years from other companies I had applied to when I finished college.
I've even gotten calls from headhunters at work, during work hours, at a phone number I haven't given to anyone for such things, and I don't have customers to spread business cards to as I work on standard products, not ASICs or ASSP things.
How is calling back someone a couple years later a bad thing, as long as you aren't interrupting his current work day? Sure, it was unsolocited, but I'd hope the hiring people would make sure that some guy really is as good as they were told he is before committing to a big salary.
I've never applied to or heard from Microsoft, but I've had similar experiences with other companies. I'm happy to know that there's still some demand out there for what I do...
For the money? Not anymore: MS's stock has been flat for at least five years now. For the software? Well, I can't think of anything more uncool than working on Windows-related stuff.
In fact, I would be embarrassed to work for MS, with their pitiful track as creators of new ideas, their astounding incompetence in the security area, their bullyness and their criminal inclinations. I have had the opportunity, in at least two occasions, to tell recruiters for MS that I won't work for this organization.
A friend of mine went to the Microsoft job fair booth with a hand-scribbled resume on notebook paper. In the "objectives" section he wrote "to get free stuff." As a joke, he gave it to them and took the available booth swag.
He got an email asking for an interview.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
I had an interview with MS Research in Cambridge.
The boss there was considerate, intelligent and thoughtful. The interview process was proper and appropriate.
I would argue in general, citing my experience in contrast to that given in the story, that it is unwise to generalise from a small number of cases.
(FYI, I didn't make the grade, and wasn't hired.)
--
Toby
No-one is above a "pop quiz", everyone is potentially a bad choice and if Microsoft's tactics mean they reduce the chance of hiring a dud, well, good for them.
However if they are turning away genuinely good people then thats their fault - but this guy sounds a little arrogant and, from what I've read, I don't fancy being in his team.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Arthur Sorkin may be a big name in operating systems design, but I think his whole article is somewhat arrogant. Microsoft recruits a lot of people a quick quiz is not insulting but it allows both parties to establish if this is a productive interview to go ahead with. They probably assume that with a PhD in CS specializing in OS design the good Dr has heard their name once or twice. I am not fond of MS but I would not get haughty and walk out of an interview based on the way the recruiter treated me, that seems presumptious at best and probably arrogant as well.
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?
Ruby on Rails Screencast
Here we go again. I'm not even reading the comments but my spider sense is tingling, typical predicted comment I've known tens/hundreds/thousands of people with PhDs applying for jobs. They were pretty retarded and couldn't even spell ROM much less display any skills...random ranting about Ivory Towers and 'real world' knowledge. No insecurity there at all, natch. Just because you were once a student doesn't actually mean you know anything about academia anymore than going to school makes you a teacher. Its all irrelevant anyway.
Personally I agree with this guy in the sense he has every right to refuse something he feels is undignified and insulting to him, I don't actually care if he's a roadsweeper or the Lucasian Professor at Cambridge. Anyway, I'll let you Slashbots get back to saying everyone should bend over and take it (whatever it is, be it a pay cut, an elephant's turgid member, crap working hours or an insulting interview) up the arse if its coming from a corporation of some description. Yes he has to take the consequences, but thats his choice to make, not yours. Frankly I think its about time some of you nay sayers also considered having a bit of self respect in the face of the corporations.
Plays violent online games as: Nerfherder76
Then if you make it, then be prepared for out-of-this-world benefits and perks. You may not be able to get rich on options anymore, but you are treated damn well.
How is this funny? The parent's post is exactly on target. MS invited him... he didn't apply for the job.
"Ever since the Phoenicians invented money, there has only been one answer to that question!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
(like phd / mcse, mba, etc)
One of these things just doesn't belong.
(Hint: four letters, starts with 'm')
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
From Gates turns over reins of his empire:
Gates, 44, said he will remain as chairman and fill a new post created for himself: chief software architect.
stay far away from the Office group. no fun and vicious politics.
And it doesn't really change anything for MS either. On one hand, there's already a lot of shame, humiliation, and guilt that goes with being associated with that company. On the other hand, they can afford to pay very seductive amounts, and shame only goes so far when you sleep on a bed of money. ;-) If you pile some anger and resentment onto the shame, you can balance that with just making the money pile bigger. Net effect: zero.
I just don't see anything for anybody to worry about, on either side. Let MS do whatever the fuck they want in their interviews.
subtitle; a year with Microsoft on the Multimedia frontier, by Fred Moody, Viking, c1995, documents how Microsoft uses the "quiz" method to interview candidates. I talked with the author (who lives near me) and he described the hiring process as "brutal." A candidate is "tested" with on-the-spot problems by several programmers who give the candidate a thumbs up or thumbs down. The questions aren't all programming, such as "How many people died in Seattle last year?" OK, hotshot, if you're so smart, figure it out. If this fellow is so offended by a pop quiz, thinking his PhD an automatic badge of erudition, then he didn't do his homework very well. This is old news.
you wonder WHY MS seems stale and lacking in innovation?
From the article "the company's extensive interview process works against hiring fresh thinkers."
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
The reason I generally pass on PhDs when looking to hire. At several companies I've worked at, the SOP is to send candidates a programming test (filled with questions that are very relevant to what we do, not BS C++ idioms and quirks).
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.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
You couldn't pay me enough money to work at Microsoft. Oh, wait, THEY could though...
:].
Seriously -- it would take a 7 or EIGHT figure offer to make me even _consider_ such an ugly offer. Really.
Now, Google, OTOH, could get me EASILY for under 6 figures. Of course my resume _is_ in with Google at various levels.
njzsftb - I am not a script [kiddie
is one of the hyperlinks goes to a Microsoftie blog.
1 /423909.aspx#426416
Here's the link:
https://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2005/06/0
Offtopic Question:
What's the benefit of running a blog on an https server? (Or whatever it's actually called)
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
This person is offended that they invited him to interview, then proceeded to interview him?
Getting an unsolicited job *offer* and an invitation to interview are two totally different things. All the article says is that he was "courted" several times. My definition of being "courted" by a successful company is when they say "Come work for us, when can you start?".
A company should always be respectful while interviweing a person, which is simply a process to determine that the person truly has the knowledge and skills neccessary to perform the job. However, the act of simply asking the interview questions is not itself disrespectful nor is it anything to get upset or offended by, unless you have a big chip on your shoulder about having a PhD.
No offense to you doctorates out there, but I have met some of your peers who definitely have that chip on their shoulder. I've known a lot of PhDs, but funny how I've never asked anyone if they had a PhD, if you know what I mean...
I remember interviewing a C++ guy with a hot-shot resume a while back. He talked a great show. Then I asked him a simple C question -- write a loop to count bits in a byte. He couldn't do it. Apparently writing code was too low-level for him. Those brain cells had long faded, or something.
Not at M$, but I was answering questions until 12:30 AM and answerd more questions correctly than they had ever seen, and gave multiple qualitative options to most of the hard technical questions. The interviewer was completely amazed and did make an offer. The problem I had with it was the job was using SCO Unix, and even back then I would not touch it with a ten foot pole. Needless to say I turned it down. It felt good turning it down, and now that SCO Unix is owned by SCOg it feels even better! ;)
"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."
For that remark, you fail my programmer IQ test. Getting people to rattle off definitions is a waste, sure, but showing you understand these concepts is a step on the way to being able to write non-shite code in an OO language.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
You get asked theoretical questions in the interview process which have no right or wrong answer and may seem at least odd.
Then score you on your reaction to paradox as they call it. It also roots out people who really weren't interested in the job. I remember when I was being interviewed the guy next to me walked out stating "I didn't go to 4 years of college to take more tests!"
It occurred to me at that point that these tests work quite well.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
With google, its "cool" that they demand stuff other than the "boring usual" ones...
With microsoft, its arrogance...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Having worked at Microsoft..... I am usually one of the first people to correct unreasonable attacks on them here at Slashdot.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I just went to check my Hotmail, and God just told me that Bill Gates is actually a woman named Nancy Bailey, an ex-striptease and current heroin-addicted street walker. Is this true?
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.
Microsoft is one of the few large companies that has a brain about hiring. I could go to any number of IT or Software positions at the drop of a hat all it takes is a nice resume, an average ability to hold conversation and a bit of BS + confidence -- NO SKILLS.
Microsoft's clever little quizes actually put people on the spot and make them show that they can think instead of only doing what's expected. I think it's brilliant.
It's HARD to find good candidates looking at resumes. You can chuck about 50% of them off the bat, and interview the best of the remaining but there is absolutely no guarantee any of those people will have what it takes. Even after an interview I'm often uncertain if the person has the skills I need, or just good sales and BS skill.
The correct answer is:
int parity( int a, int b, int c )
{
return (a & b) | (b & c) | (a & c);
}
assume the 3 ints are X Y and Z
zero = 0;
/* this will get us bitpatterns of where each pair agrees */;
temp1 = ~(X^Y);
temp2 = ~(Y^Z);
temp3 = ~(Z^X);
/* this will get us the actual bit values of where each pair agrees with 0 representing places where the pair agrees on 0 or the pair doesnt agree at all, and 1 meaning the pair agrees on 1 */
temp1 &= X;
temp2 &= Y;
temp3 &= Z;
/* or them all together for final bit values after voting */
result = temp1 | temp2 | temp3;
this works right in my head, feel free to correct me if it doesnt work.
{
return (A & B) | (A & C) | (B & C);
}
Pretty much the definition of "best 2 out of three", isn't it?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I guess it would depend on what you were wanting to fill the room with!
I hate the corporate world; it's so constraining -- even if it does pay the bills...
or:
result = (a&b) | ((a|b)&c);
Oops, I didn't make that a complete function.
Fun.
I interviewed with MS while in Grad school, had a video phone interview, not the best technology at the time. The interviewer, as stated before, didn't bother to introduce himself, just started the pop quiz, after I gave him my answer, he conceded it would produce a correct solution but was wrong becuase their was a more efficent way to constuct the algorithm. I ended the interview, who wants to work for a bunch of A-holes. There are plenty of companies with great benefits.
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.
that a company would want to see if someone is technically competent because we all know that everyone with a doctorate is head and shoulders above all the other candidates in the job market.
They asked me how I would design a TV remote control from scratch.
I told them I didn't have enough customer feedback to make an intelligent decision.
I didn't get an offer.
Now, if they'd described their target audience and asked me to submit a design that I thought the target audience would like, and to defend that decision, I might have been assimilated.
By the way, for my own personal use, the remote control they handed me to "redesign" was just fine FOR ME. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I agree with the need for a test regardless of paper qualifications or experience on the resume but developing a good test is far harder than most people think. I find your question a rather poor one unless you are looking to hire someone working on RAID software. And the the person who offered XOR as a solution, you failed. 0^0^0 = 2^2^0 = 0. Please tell me that XOR was not the answer the question author expected?
I've often passed pop quizzes by pointing out how poor they are. My favorite answer was to a question about the time complexity of several sorting algorithms. I replied that I own Knuth vol. 3 so I don't have to memorize that sort of thing. Be sure to bring this up to the "boss" when he asks you about the quiz, the "engineer" graded me down, the "boss" asked for more info. I told him what vol 3 was about, and then pointed out that the stated time complexities make assumptions about the data that may not match the real world. I was hired and got to write the new test.
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
Since your command won't work as you think it will... Try something like
/mnt/fuji /home/microsoft/building8/
mv
Wonder what happens when you move Mnt Fuji into Bill's Office....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Just because you have a Ph.D. even one as dusty as this, DOES NOT MEAN YOU'RE A FUCKING GENIUS. I work at a university with the Engineering and CompSci folks.... PHD != genius, in fact it's more of the opposite....
I agree with Microsoft, you want to work for my company you take a fucking IQ test... that will give me a better gauge of what you're worth than what your fucking friend told me. Who by the way passed the test, and just may be capable of fooling me... barrjox
A look at their product line and history shows the result.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
MOD THIS UP!!!!
Google is very arrogant during the interview process.
I've been through 28 or more job interviews. I think the interview should reflect the organization. If you get the impression that your interviewers are arrogant assholes, great; you can walk out a free man.
I had one interviewer yelling at me because he was convinced that with my marks I was wasting his time because I must be using him for practice. I told him I wasn't impressed with his manner of dealing with his concerns and I turned down his subsequent offer of meeting with the firm's managing partner. I don't care if this was a "test" to see if I would cry or something; I wasn't willing to deal with people like that.
People who use head games in interviews will use them when you work for them. People who are nice and just chat and don't address anything serious will be similarly challenged at work.
Don't be upset that interviews aren't perfect; instead, value them for what they tell you about your prospective employer. The very worst that can happen is that you travel to an interview, get interviewed professionally by some HR person, and then get dumped into a work environment that doesn't reflect the artificial universe the HR person represented.
I had a very wide range of interviews and can't say I was impressed by any of them: shouting, broken chair, long waits, phone calls answered throughout, small talk about nothing in particular, etc. etc.. In the end, I sold myself in the place where my research indicated I would fit in.
It's easy when Microsoft offers them exorbitant wages of 40 Rupees an hour!
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
They only want the guy because he's a registered patent agent. Check his website.
Clearly, the code should be effecient for the default case where the three values agree:
int bestOfThree(int a, int b, int c) {
return (a==b)? a : ((a&b)|(b&c)|(a&c));
}
a_bit, b_bit, and c_bit supposed to be always 0 except when i == 0 ?
(a 0
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I have a strange reaction to that question "How would you move Mt. Fuji?"
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!"
Maybe it's just me because I'm confused, but the article says first "he first received an unsolicited invitation to Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters in about 2000". Then is says "He withdrew his application." How can he withdraw his application when he never applied?
FalconShould there be a Law?
I was a junior in undergrad in '99 who had done some programming contests, but was only a CS minor.
I got a letter addressed in the following manner at my undergraduate dorm (using variable names instead of my real information):
*FIRST NAME* *CITY*
*DORM ADDRESS*
*LAST NAME*, *STATE* *ZIP CODE*
So, if this was addressed to someone like George W. Bush, it would read:
George Washington
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Bush, DC 20500
No better way to impress potential recruits than to completely screw up the address label, right? I'm still surprised, to this day, that it got delivered in the first place, but it was a great laugh, especially since I didn't want a CS job and especially not with Microsoft.
-Jellisky
About seven years ago, a friend of mine got an interview with Microsoft. The interview consisted of him coding on a dry erase board while the interviewers watched. He didn't get hired because frankly seven years ago his coding wasn't up to speed.
I applied for a developer position with AT&T many years ago (1987 to be exact). They scheduled an interview with me at 8 in the morning. The "interview" consisted of filling out an application and taking what they called a "Telephone Aptitude Battery" which consisted of very fundamental math problems that could be solved by any half-intelligent 10th grader. I was out by 9 o'clock, which was ridiculous since I had to leave at 5 to get there on time. Needless to say I never heard back from them, nor would I have been interested if I had.
The only feedback I got was that I did well on the "test".
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
A very long time ago I interviewed with a small local part of Microsoft, and, as expected, was asked questions that involved little bits of code.
I don't like trick questions myself, but have no problem with questions that either show how the person thinks, or show how they behave under pressure.
The code I was asked to write in the course of the interview included code to reverse a string, and code to generate prime numbers (I used the Sieve of Eratosthenes on that one).
I's been a while since I've interviewed anybody, but the company is growing again, and if I need it, here is a series of questions I use:
1. What is a binary tree?
2. Write the data structure in C to represent a binary tree.
3. What is an algorithm that uses binary trees?
4. Write the relevant code to implement said algorithm.
Bonus points on question 3 if they say anything other than searching adn sorting. If they say Huffman encoding (and can explain how it works), they're probably an on-the-spot hire.
...laura
This article starts out like an examination of M$'s hiring practices and philosophy, then turns into a 12 step graduation...look what we've done, we're new and improved.
This article seems like the product of an HR brainstorming meeting at Redmond; part of a recruitment campaign.
It's a little too "cathartic" for me that Ledgard, an HR manager, would go on the crazy train about this problem, run off the res on her own, unless senior management hadn't blessed it in advanced.
Is it such a stretch to think that M$ would use blogging in a sophisticated recruitment/marketing strategy?
are a_bit, b_bit, and c_bit supposed to be always 0 except when i == 0 ?
(a << i) & 1 is 0 for any value of i > 0
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
OTOH it's just human nature: the Ph.D. in the university environment is at the top of the food chain and has spent years getting there. His/her role models may have been jerks, and often the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Given that, there are plenty of Ph.D.s who are down-to-earth and not at all egocentric.
Their hiring bar for college/university grads is pretty low. You have no experience to speak of, so you're a clean slate, nobody expects any miracles from you. Now if you HAVE worked somewhere before things change pretty drastically for you. Folks who interview you expect experience and knowledge. You're more likely to get tough problems to solve in each 1 hour session. If you don't solve them, or at least don't stumble upon the correct path to solve them, you won't be hired.
Why is this? I don't know. I think the consensus is that folks who have worked elsewhere are "tainted", and it's hard to re-program them to accept MSFT culture. So unless you really kick ass, your chances are pretty slim if you worked anywhere else.
Seriously, I think the arrogance is on the part of this Sorkin guy. Poor bastard keeps getting asked to work for a large successful software company which pays well, boo fucking hoo.
Of course, I didn't read TFA ...
Most folks could cope with arrogance if they are offered top dollar for their skill set. Trouble is, Microsoft has never offered salaries even matching industry average, not to mention exceeding. Not for individual contributors, anyway.
Adam Barr threw the idea on his blog - MSFT should start paying 120% of industry average. You won't believe how many talented people are willing to cope with moderate amounts of bullshit if the pay is good.
I suggest that if they approach you, that you respond by requireing some money up front. For an interview, say $1000 to your favorite charity, and another $1000 to you personally if the process goes nowhere. For exploritory talks on a takeover $100K seems a reasonable amount. In each case, the sum has to be big enough to give them pause, but small enough that it's loose change compared to the value of their proposal.
I'm not suggesting that you jerk them around this way, only that you can protect yourself from their usual practices...
I just interviewed and was offered a job by Microsoft. Yes, it was grueling - 7 one-hour interviews in a day. They did ask hard questions. However, there were no condescending puzzle questions, nor what I call trivia-tech questions. I was treated with respect by all, and actually, other than it was tiring, it was an enjoyable process. I think that there is a reason that people take jobs as MS - they are remuneratively generous.
Q: "How would you move mount Fuji"?
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:)
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
How the fuck is this news and why does anyone care?
Is this the best story you guys can come up with to bash on Microsoft? WHO FUCKING CARES.
And I can tell you unquestionably that -- yes -- the first day is filled with self-promoting hoopla and multimedia infusion of the greatness of the company you've just stepped into.
Why wouldn't you want to do that? The United States Marine Corps absolutely is the antithesis of this (also joined them for a 4 year 'job', lol). The Marines have a NEO which is kinda like the following:
Recruiter: "Get the fuck onto my yellow footsteps now!"
Recruits: [Sounds of tennis shoes tripping on level concrete in mad scrambles to align foot with footstep]
Recruiter: "Too slow! Get back!"
Repeat as necessary. Usually about 4 times on average.
They don't give a care if you love it or not. You signed a contract. You have zero options (smart options, that is). Microsoft and IBM are like this -- their logic is that they are the top, and if you don't want to be part of the top, so be it! Good riddance!
In time, you'll be fairly loyal, and love your job to a degree, or at least the unity of your workforce. It's hard to find anywhere else.
... even use it for getting some excercise in weightlifting doing it with my cock...
my phd makes me so smart sexy and i dont need viagra for boosting my pecker...
--
shitty morons who define themselves with a piece of paper
Q: What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman?
A. The car salesman knows when he's lying.
The article was talking about someone with a PhD in computer science. Morons do not get PhD's. And no hand holding will get you that far.
Microsoft asks CS 101 questions in their interviews, which include "how do you reverse a string" and "how do you insert into a linked list". Considering that PhD's are overqualified to teach CS 101, asking those types of questions are a straight insult.
So, what are the advantages of each of these sorting algorithms? (shows a list of options)
Baaa!
Yes, I see. Okay, if you wanted to set up a database backend for a website, what architecture would you pursue?
Baaa!
That's an interesting approach. Hmmm...can you spot the bug in this sample of C++ code?
Baaa!
You found it! Only a handful of people come through here and can spot that one!
Baaa! (smiles)
Good, very good, we'll get an offer though HR right away. I look forward to working with you, Ms. Ewe.
Baaa! (waves goodbye)
works for MS. All through college he was completely anit-MS, with various UNIX workstations in his dorm room (Next, SGI, SUN). He interviewed not planning on taking the job, just for the free trip to Seattle. When asked what he could bring to MS, he replied "I believe I can make your products suck less". He got an offer and has been there for several years. I don't use MS products so I can't comment much on whether or not the suck less than they did five years ago.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
This may sound arrogant, so I post anonymously.
I gave Microsoft my resume as an advanced undergrad. Never heard anything back from them, even though I was a senior level computer science student my second year of college. I basically had 4 more classes to take to be a graduate level CS student. I wanted a summer internship.
3 years and many more than 4 classes later, I got an e-mail from a Microsoft recruiter: We'd like to interview you for a testing position up here in Redmond. We see that you gave us a resume a while back and now are graduating. Would you be interested? My response: If you'd offered me a testing job 2 years ago, I would've jumped. I've got too much research to think about to consider things like that now.
Since at least four programmers have answered the same question in the exact same way, the real answer is to see if the problem has already been solved :)
If you are a savvy interviewee, the "questions" people ask in these types of interviews give you as much clue about the place as anything. There are no wrong or right answers, they are just trying to get some clues about your personality.
This is different from the "tech-out", which a technical interview to determine whether or not the hapless candidate thrown into your office with no notice by your PHB is a total dumbass or not.
If you're too big of a snob to play MS's interviewing game, then you should work somewhere else. 99% of the jobs at MS probably aren't CS (whatever that is): it isn't rocket science, it's trying to get the Flaming 747 Full of Ebola Victims that is the Product out the door. Like a lot of places, their ideal candidate likes to play politics AND "think out of the box".
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
"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."
The BlueScreen has already started, it is too late for the bits to vote.
But rather than attempt to win him over as a prize prospect--Sorkin specializes in operating system design and computer security, among other areas--Microsoft interviewers challenged him with a technical "pop quiz," he recalled. No one tried to sell him on either the company or the job, he said. He withdrew his application.
Large companies have corporate policies. Usually when interviewing a candidate for a position, the candidate has to prove that they are capable and worthy of the job. Sorkin apparently believes that he should be treated differently than everyone else. That fact does not suggest that anyone other than Sorkin himself is arrogant and self-centered.
I'm fairly shocked that nobody else has picked up on this nugget of detail yet.
I broke my pipe down to pieces (the chanter, believe it or not, is the longest segment) and put the four-reeded monster in a tote. /., so I got that goin' for me.
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
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I'd bodyslam him.
Oh, sorry. i thought it said Mr. Fuji.
WHile working at M$ I interviewed for permanent positions 4 times, was accepted for one position, but passed it up for another offer at another company...
They don't interview you for the job, they interview you for the company...
I am a software test engineer, and was a test lead. My group was small, but we were all contractors.
When I interviewed for a permanent position with my team, I was interviewed by another team, a team of developers.
None of the questions I was asked was team lead related, test related or even my project related...
If I had gotten the position, I guess I wouldn't have known about anything we were doing (like the gal they hired) - maybe I wasn't the right person for the job, after having worked on that team for 4+ years...?
--E--
Microsoft already does hand out their software for free. Look up MSDN-AA. I think it is MSDN Academic Alliance or something. They are trying to get in good with the colleges and thus allow students to download free copies of their software. Not a bad deal though.
like remakes of movies, although those are almost always crap:
I disagree that remakes are worse than the original movies. Maybe some are but others are better I believe. An example is "Mighty Joe Young". The remake , made in 1998, is better than the original made in 1949. And though I don't recall seeing the original movie "The Italian Job", the remak was good. Now what I don't like often are the movie versions of books I liked or loved. If not every tyme then most of the tyme I see a movie of a book I liked I am disappointed, which is why I didn't go see "The Lord of the Rings movies. I loved the book trilogy and didn't want to be disappointed in the movies.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This sounds like the sort of problem which can be solved with a simple truth table or Karnaugh map and Boolean minterms with the bitwise operators available in the programming language of your choice. For example if we take voting to mean the most votes of one type, true or false, for a particular bit in the output then the truth table for the function would look something like the following:
000 - false
001 - false
010 - false
011 - true
100 - false
101 - true
110 - true
111 - true
if we then take the bitwise and of the minterms then the result would be the following:
(!A & B & C) & (A & !B & C) & (A & B & !C) & (A & B & C)
Perhaps I have missed something? It has been a while since I studied boolean algebra. I have seen questions like these in interviews before where the answers have very little to do with the software that the company actually writes. How often would the bitwise and of three integers come up in the average business application development scenario? If the interview was for an engineering type software company or a hardware manufacturer then it makes more sense. Anyway, that was my coffee break crack at the problem...back to the real world.
I would use the patented, trademarked Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, declare Mount Fuji to be IBM, that empty field next to it to be Intel, and the mountain would move itself.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When I interviewed at Intel, they spent all day asking technical questions and little time selling me on the company. I believe Google does the same thing too. Maybe it's Sorkin who's the arrogant one to assume that he is beyond questioning.
Vote for Pedro
"How Would You Move Mount Fuji?"
Dear God.. You'd think they would have learned the lesson of Macross Island already O_o'
But why move Fuji when nature is already doing the job for you?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
"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."
Ok, so let me get this straight. He got called for an interview but didn't want to get tested on his knowledge. Seems like arrogance and pride to me.
Most jobs now a days ask you to take an exam or some sort. Just because u got a Bachelors, Masters or Phd doens't mean u know ur stuff. I gradded with a bunch of ppl who got better GPA's than me, but don't really know much at all.
If I was hiring someone, I'd give them a test cause I've been through the system and I know for a fact that GPA doesn't mean jack, considering the fact that u don't even learn much in school in the first place.
About scheduling an interview for him without asking him, doesn't sound too great either and seems arrogant on MS's HR departments side.
Sorkin clearly pissed someone off who keeps putting him on the Microsoft interview list.
Where can I find this person, and what does it take to really piss him off?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Memo to Bill Gates: Even you sir, cannot have your cake and eat it too.
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.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure most PhD's work hard and really do know the shit they talk about. It just that the vast majority of those that write intro-level textbooks that cause me to doubt the overall effectiveness of a university education vs actual career experience.
Whose who can't,
Falconteach and whose who can't teach,
write.
Should there be a Law?
Wait until Google announces that they are releasing the Mount Fuji Personal Mover, respond with a press release that I will soon have a better MFPM, then look for some 3rd party who is doing the same thing and buy them out.
----
No, but seriously, all I need is a gun to my head and a blow job and I will move that stupid mounting in no more than 60 seconds.
You can't handle the truth.
People are easy to accuse Microsoft for their arrogance. But Google recruiters (and other companies big & small) does the same thing too. Multiple unsolicited invitations. IQ tests in the interview. I wish the recruiters would have done more work to really know the candidate rather than just resume fishing with google (like search for 'Java web services resume'!) But hack, you can politely decline or not even respond to unsolicited message if you are not interested.
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.
"If somebody asks me to come for an interview, I'd damn well be pissed to have to explain to them why they asked me to come in."
Unless it's a job for The Psychic Friends Network.
I'll state it flat out. The arrogance here is all on Sorkin's side. Chutzpah, I believe, is the more appropriate individials. He basically has a job offer handed to him on a golden platter, and he starts nit-picking. Whatever. In his place, others would be glad Microsoft took any notice at all.
Yes, I would like a job with Microsoft. There - I said it. No, I don't like Windows. I am a Debian GNU/Linux user. No, I don't like MS' practices, but it's still the hands-down best place to work in the field of applied computer science. Yes, I was depressed when my flu affected my internship intervew with Microsoft. Who wouldn't be?
Moreover, I will state flatly that anyone here on Slashdot, including the most vocal MS-whiners, trolls, Linux/BSD/Darwin/VMS/whatever, given the opportunity, will go and gladly work for Microsoft.
One day a while back, when I was between jobs, my wife told me that Microsoft had cold-called to set up an interview with me (unsolicited) and she had turned them down. It still makes me smile. It was probably twice the money I ended up getting, but what kind of life is that?
Anyhow, I'm all for the pop quiz, except that you should be expecting it. About 2 to 6 hours of difficult questions is entirely appropriate. And while a PhD is often correlated with an appreciable skillset, it is not always the case, and regardless, it's quite possible that the skillset does not match the job requirements. Yes, I've seen both.
Also, before they even get to the live interview, a one hour phone screen and one hour timed written test (email) are a good way to save on interview costs.
If it was so easy, he should have just taken the opportunity to show them his brilliance. If he's not willing to expend a couple hours jumping through hoops, he could easily be the arrogant or thoughtless type who writes substandard code propelled by his own ego, ignores local standards, and never gets back to you after you call three times. Well, perhaps this is what Microsoft is looking for.
I ran into a similar situation at Midway Games. The Technical Director asked me if I would come in for an interview (never even applied, the TD just happened to be from my Alma Matta), When I got there, I met a bunch of condescending people, who acted like I was falling all over myself just to hand them a resume. Needless to say I turned down the request for a 2nd interview.
:)
There arrogance was a little a ironic to me since, they haven't shipped a decent game since MKII
It's easy. First off, it has to be a symmetric function of a, b, c; that is, for every permutation p(a,b,c) of a, b, c, it must be f(p(a,b,c)) = f(a,b,c). Second, it suffices for two out of three to agree independently on a result (be it 0 or 1). So the "best" answer is: a&b | b&c | c&a. An "operational reading" of the three-majority-vote would be that "less than two 1 are not enough".
While it's true that that won't work with the addition, I hardly think XOR will work either. Still, that's the kind of knowledge that I suspect Microsoft is looking for.
Ron dies in chapter 9 of book 7.
Who gives a crap about Microsoft.
By creating an incredibly hostile atmosphere for software developers (you never know if the next release of Windows is going to bundle some application that will make your product worthless), they sabotage their own employment market.
Such predatory behavior kills interest in CS, which may partly explain the decline in number of applicants.
So what if they initiated the contact? They're paying the salary, and probably a substantial one if this guy is as valuable as his PhD suggests. So he feels that questions are beneath him, but dismisses M$ attitude as displaying "a certain degree of arrogance and presumption." It's a few uncomfortable hours for a long-term investment.
Frankly, he was never serious about the job, and shouldn't have wasted the interviewer's time. If this was for a position at Redhat or IBM, anyone but Microsoft, I suspect the responses would have been less sympathetic.
I think you mean
(!A & B & C) | (A & !B & C) | (A & B & !C) | (A & B & C)
Further, you can simplify this to the answer a lot of other people got by realizing that (!A & B & C) | (A & B & C) is equivalent to (B & C). Since you can do the same thing with the second and third clauses, you can get something like this:
(B & C) | (A & C) | (A & B)
Whats wrong with these people! Can't a man walk down the street without being offered a job?
Well, maybe it was the fact that I was in PSS... But the fact is, my interview process was atypical. They needed to hire someone fast and so it was about two weeks between when I applied and when I was hired. I only had three interviews.
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.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"How would you design an in car coffee maker?"
Well.
Dr. Sorkin said "OK" to the first step by expressing interest in the job, and whether or not he filled out a paper form, he did apply for the position. He bailed on the second step, possibly after showing up for what he thought would be an "informational" interview and getting a classic Microsoft intelligence test.
Did I say overlords? I meant protectors.
The members of my Linux Users Group (http://lug.iit.edu/bb/viewtopic.php?t=240) got spammed by a Microsoft Recruiter. They even personalized the message for the more active members. I think a few may have replied with a resume but I sure as hell won't.
-Evan
Assuming your code is meant to be C or C++, since I don't know any other language that would allow that syntax, you fail for the same two reasons as almost everyone else replying to this question:
You also get two all of your own:
Sorry, no job for you!
In case anyone's wondering, neither C nor C++ requires an int to be 32-bits. Moreover, these are signed types, which means the physical representation of negative values isn't specified unambiguously. You may cause undefined behaviour if the result of the bitwise operations on two legal representations yields an illegal representation.
I think it's a bit of a daft question in the first place, but if you ever did need to do this, it's likely that the above would be rather important things to check before proceeding.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
When I was graduating college, I interviwed with MS when they came on campus.
They wanted to fly me out to Redmond to interview. I said "No thanks, I don't think you guys do anything interesting." The woman on the other end of the phone was speechless for a minute and then came back with something to the effect of "you know I'm calling from MICROSOFT right?"
I've got "The Poseidon Adventure" with Ernest Borgnine and I'll have to watch until the remake is out before I decide to see it. If remakes of some of these come out I may see them, such as "The Mechanic", "Soylent Green", "Deathwish", and "Cool Hand Luke". I hadn't heard about a remake of"Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". A remake of Eddie And The Cruisers may be interesting as well.
Green chips anyone?
FalconShould there be a Law?
In the long run, most PhDs end up in industry because the number of professorships available is very limited.
I interviewed in Redmond last fall, and I have two points to make about their interviewing process: 1) The position that I interviewed for had nothing to do with the skillset discussed during the phone screening, and upon arriving, we realized that I was a horrible match. (Hey, at least I got a free trip to WA!) 2) Microsoft was one of the most polite companies I've interviewed with. They were polite to me on campus, and when they sent me my letter of rejection.
In the past, I've interviewed with companies where employees were openly rude to each other, and with companies that made it a policy to not follow up with candidates that they chose not to hire. (The second company ended up giving the position that I interviewed for to my school's drug dealer, only to fire him a few weeks later!)
I saw a 'dating analogy' from a /.er and was a bit freaked out. Then I read 'breed' and 'offspring' and the world was right again.
I'm wrong and so are you.
The great thing about Microsoft interviews is they try to test intelligence. Most companies say they want to hire intelligent people but do nothing to directly test that.
... fast talkers are usually just fast talkers.
Thus essentially most companies hire fast talkers, under the impression that they are intelligent. This is very wrong
Microsoft are trying to directly test intelligence during interviews. Since I hope that is my most employable trait, I am glad they are at least trying.
That is spoken, truly, as a man who has never been forced to work for beans. I'm working, making not enough cash to even survive on if I wasn't staying with my family, and you're telling me to not make it about the money? Well, it is. I need money to buy food, pay rent, and pay bills. It's all about the money. Would I love to work at certain places over others? Sure. But beggars can't be choosers. Microsoft would be one of my higher choices, because I have heard it's a good place to work -- but regardless of that, when you've been workign for beans, and you get a job that pays you well, it's enough to make you loyal to that company.
Jay | http://oldos.org
the jobs don't apply for you, YOU apply for the jobs.
For me, the two big points are that they also asked other interesting, relevant, difficult questions, and they also treat their employees pretty well (at least, that's what I hear from everyone who works there).
And if it matters, I've also got a PhD in CS, and I must say that some of attitudes expressed here on PhDs are, umm, unusual. I happen to be one of those people who's pretty good with bit twiddling. Not everyone is, but bit fiddling is not exactly the only thing that matters in CS, and I've worked with some very intelligent and productive people who are startlingly unable to fiddle bits.
I have a PhD in CS, I don't expect a pass on the tech interview, in fact I look forward to it because it gives me a chance to differentiate myself from the other candidates. I don't like the canned programming tests very much because they are not good indicators of talent, but if I want the gig then it's worth it for me to jump through a few hoops.
Frankly it doesn't surprise me that some well known members of the programming community feel tech interviews are beneath them. I've met a few of them and they have planet sized egos. While they obviously have great skill, I wonder if a few fear coming up short in some technical areas?
We need to know that there are 2 types of interviewers.
1. Interviewers who can *hire*.
2. Interviewers who can *recommend to hire*.
Both of them will have different expectations for the same opening.
Slashdot = Sarcasm
In psychology class I came across a study where subjects were asked to interview people for a theoretical job. Interviewers (the subjects) consistantly gave higher ratings when they got to talk more than the job candidate. This reveals a fundamental weakness of the interview process. The result mostly depends on the ego of the interviewer.
"who assume that everyone wants to work for Microsoft."
What incredible arrogance.
They could not pay me enough to "sell my soul".
I would not even date someone if she worked for M$.
(Yes, I have turned down girls for that reason).
MS flew me to Redmond for tech support lead for MS press. I thought the interview went great. The questions that they threw at me did not throw me off at all. I was very relaxed in the interviews and was positive I had the job.
I was told later that "My management style did not fit them." I think it was because I was asked "If there was an error in a MS press book, would you recall the book?" I said, "If it would cause a catastrophic loss of the customer's data I would."
I think my honesty in admitting my integrity versus corporate profits cost me the job. Oh well, I'm happy in my current job (doing OSX server and client admin)
My grandfather was at the Colorado School of Mines in the 20's. A shop teacher made him cube a block of steel with a file, which is a little strange. Later, during the Depression, he was the foreman in a machine shop, and the teacher walks in for a job. He asks the former teacher to cube a block of steel. Said teacher leaves, understanding the futility.
It sounds as though people who might have an axe to grind, or who are not quite up to snuff, are interviewing somebody out of their league.
I've interviewed twice at Microsoft up at the Redmond campus over the years, and it's a *bitch* to get in. Stress questions, early morning technical interviews, 8 hours nonstop (including lunch), you're psychologically and physically exhausted by the end of them.
I have a lot of respect for Microsoft, and it's no wonder they are the dominant development force. Their hiring practices are *so* strict. A buddy of mine just interviewed at a satellite office here in Denver, and had the same 8+ hour marathon.
And if you want to keep score... I flubbed both MS interviews I went on (though I was 20 and 22 at the times, so that makes sense).. my buddy made it in.
-- Jinsaku
You said: The issue with Microsoft is not arrogance.
Article said: who blasted some of her company's managers as "entitled, spoiled whiners" who assume that everyone wants to work for Microsoft.
Your absolutely right! It's their baby-like spoiled from birth mentality! 120% wage increase from industry standard still doesn't eliminate the whining, I think the wage increase would happen much sooner then the whining ending!
So let me get this straight... the author thinks it's arrogant for Microsoft to call him up, offer him the job unsolicited, and when he goes in for the interview they ask him technical questions instead of trying to sell him on the job? Who's the arrogant one here? I think he's just pissed that they didn't worship him because he has a PhD in CS.
I like my women how I like my sugar.. granulated.
"CS" means "Computer Science".
Hell, I drink a lot of beer, but have you seen the guys who have to go in sewers? Now that's round!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Microsoft will play promotional videos at like job fairs or campus presentations. They're usually about like "what work at MS is like". They typically put a bunch of employees on there saying stuff like "i get to work on something that 200 billion people use, that's pretty cool".
:)
My feedback to my campus recruiter was that "look, no real development job is a bunch of really hot girls hanging out with you in a break room while you all paw on each other on a couch. that video is crap. I am sure working at MS is not like attending a frat party. while i appreciate the effort in targeting the geeky male, this is plainly fraudulent"
my friend had a different response though.. "that video was awesome.. i was totally psyched tow ork for MS after seeing it".
Anyway, in over 5 years of employment with MS, I have never been in a lounge with attractive women being moderately flirtatious. I've spent at least 15 hours though on anti-harassment training.
As far as the "do we think we're hot stuff" - yes and no.
Alot of people are very self critical here and very open about how poor some things are, with the caveat that it was as good as they were able to make it at the time, and there are non-technical, non-expertise forces in play.
I was complaining to a few people about just how lame the shell file routines are (you know, the "preparing to copy" dialog..). I was having a pretty good argument with some folks about how "it isn't good enough, all the clever things you're trying to do don't work and make the common path worse" and so on. Eventually the conversation was one of the guys that has a long history with windows shell saying something along the lines of "look, we know it sucks. every person who has worked on it has quit the company sometime after working on it. its not a fundamentally hard problem, it's all of the stupid requirements that make it ridiculous".
I wasn't happy with it, but i didn't know what avenues were left. It's not like i have anything to do with windows or the shell in the first place, but anybody (even me) has the opportunity to talk tot he guys that made it and make them defend what they did. That's pretty cool, imo. I get a lot of answers and details that the outside world doesn't get, and i play it both ways - when i think something sucks, i grill people here, and when i see something on slashdot which is just plain bs, i call the poster on it and tell it like it is.
finally, the other aspect of "we're the best" is its comparative nature to other organizations. It's hard to do a comparative analysis of Microsoft people to just about anybody else, since nobody does exactly what we do. (nobody else is in the business of supplying software to the majority of companies, governments, grandmothers, etc, for the last 15 some odd years running)
I have, in my 5 years, on occasion, come out of meetings or read emails that made me think "do they really work here? did they pass the same interviews i did?". In Redmond (i'm now at the Fargo campus) i especially often felt like I worked with mouth-breathing idiots when i went into the parking garages. My only hope would be that the parts of the brain that design software and the parts of the brain that park cars have _zero_ shared neurons.
I figure since i did 2 separate interview loops - one for a straight dev job where they no-hired me, and one the following day for a dev/test job that i have now, i am just on the border of the dumbest possible person MS could hire, and so everyone should be clearly smarter than me at all times.
That infact doesn't seem to be the case, so i dont konw what's going on with the people i have to explain things to over and over (maybe i'm too dim to explain things clearly?
Anyway, i've only worked int he developer tools org.. first on visual studio servicing.. now in Microsoft Business Framework. Both jobs put me in the position of working on platform/developer tools that other companies would use to do _th
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I generally think we suck less than we used to, but there's obviously plenty of room for improvement.
:)
I sold my NeXT color turbo, but i kept 3 of the 68020 cubes i got from the math department and they form the foundation of my clear-glass coffee table
I gave my indigo2 to a friend that was interested in irix (it was too noisy/hot), and my Sun machine is turned off (too noisy, too slow). I still run my openBSD box though.. works to darn well to not use it. My wife has 2 OS X laptops that i get to support (blah).
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I hate Micro$oft as much as the next guy. However (and mod me down for flame-bait if you must), my message to Mr. Sorkin is "Boo fucking hoo". So they invited you in for an interview, refused to kiss your ass, and decided to see whether you could actually think on your feet. You're right, they should have just read your CV on-line and decided to hire you based on that. Somebody is being arrogant here, and it's not M$.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Not that i would accuse MS of such nastee business practices but i have heard of companies who will solicit interviews with people when they have a technical problem, and then phrasing the problem as a question as part of a quiz and then saying 'thanks, we'll call you'. They can then implement the provided solution and the interviewee is none the wiser their 'quiz' was actually a solution gathering exercise
I had that attitude in college. I went to the MS recruiting presentation at our school. I was going to really show that nice recruiter lady how clever i was. She was going to talk about microsoft and working there. At the appropriate time, i came up with a pretty funny way of asking
:)
"why would i want to work on something that sucks?"
everyone laughed. i thought i was _so_ clever.
her reponse put me in my place:
"so you can make it better"
She got me.
I've spent the last 5 years filing bugs, writing automated tests, writing automation systems, reviewing designs, keeping developers from doing as many dumb things as they're prone to do (i obviously dont catch everything).
Microsoft has a long way to go before they don't suck at all - they'll probably never get there. Infact, every day, i'll come across some random thing where i ask myself (or tell my co-worker, who i'm usually helping troubleshoot something at the time), "man, _who_ writes this shit software?".
But they're getting better. And I'm doing my part.
BTW - my pre MS experience was _exclusively_ in the UNIX ABM camp. 5 years ago when i started, i was talking to people alot about "here's how it is in linux", "here's how it is in solaris". They were interested. We were starting to get beat up in the press and with customers, and mysql, apache, linux, solaris.. they kept coming up.
We're doing better now because we're competing with free software. I used to have to fight really hard to get someone to do something "right". I used to have to explain that security was important.. that real customers expect uptime, etc.
We "get it" a lot more now than we used to. The beating we take in the press and with customers - from our competitors - is pushing us harder and i for one love it. I dont have to convince people anymore that a potential security threat is worth fixing - they just do it. I dont have to tell people about "how the other half lives". We're finally starting to "get it".
we still have a long way to go, and we still do stuff that upsets me (i have _NO_ idea whats going on with the claria situation, but it _looks_ very fishy and lots of employees are _pissed_, and demanding some clear answers and external messaging), but W2k, Wxp, and Server 2003 are really pretty good.. a hell of a lot better than W98 or NT4!. SQL Server 2k is a damn sight better than mySQL for... basically everything. I've written a bunch of perl/php and i'd have to say that i really, really prefer ASP.NET, and i can't even tell you how much better asp.net is than plain old ASP. Or how IIS6 is worlds more secure than IIS5 was.
Yeah. The nice thing about working at MS - you're never out of broken stuff to fix
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Could you explain that? I've been wondering about it for quite some time.
People don't hire programmers with degrees, they hire people with 4.5 years experience (no more, no less) in C# on Mono using Websphere/BEA on Solaris 2.7 connecting to commercial ATM switching equipment made by Horst Wessel GmbH (defunct), oh and recently, too.
I'm a programmer, just because I've used Visual Basic doesn't mean I can't use C++ (I've taught it in college FFS, but have no "commercial" experience). Heck, I didn't get hired in one job because, despite my embarrassingly extensive VB experience, I didn't have an eidetic knowledge of VB/ASP. I'm an expert, I learn what I need as I need it. If you only hire people with specific domain knowledge, you get the clueless monkey hackers that seem to write most of the code nowadays.
In conclusion, the CS labor market is teh sux0r, it isn't just Microsoft.
No, I'd ask him what the afterlife is like. Codd is dead.
At our company, we were looking into various web-based confrencing software. Microsoft aranged a demo, and their product didn't work. The sales guy was like: "yeah, but I can get you a great discount!"
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
As far as I know, among the 30+ CS PhD's graduating from our department this year, only 6-7 will go academia. Others can't land an academia job or don't want an academia job, so will all go to industry. Many other CS PhD programs I heard of are having a similar situation this year. I guess it might be because there are much more PhD's graduating this year than previous years, since everybody thought the economy is turning better and job-hunting will be easier this year, so everybody that didn't dare to graduate in the previous 2-3 years are now rushing to graduate. On the other hand the number of available academia jobs didn't increase significantly this year. That's why only a small portion of CS PhD's will get faculty jobs this year.
People, people. Are you not getting it because you don't want to, or because you fear (as geeks) it may be you?
Aspergers often comes across as arrogance. Read up. It's hardly that. Offensive, yes, but the reasons are not to be imagined but understood. It's Gates, Ballmer, and I have no doubt (as daughter and ex-wife of men with Aspergers) the entire Redmond culture, which only makes sense.
It would be nice if science were about facts. It would also be nice if emotional reactions were known as such, to self and others. That way, why, it might be sane out there! How cool would that be.
So I give you this answer: If you don't like Mt. Fuji where it is, hire that magician who made Diamond Head "disappear" on TV. If you wanted a damn good engineer you could have hired me--but then you opened your mouth and revealed the depth of your foolishness. Thanks for the lunch! [Walks away, humming "Take this job and SHOVE IT!"]
Of course he was upset. The overhead for recursive functions is many times more than that for implimenting queues. From this page covering what you should have remembered from basic computer science, we find that "Every time a method is called, all of the local variables, registers, and method parameters must be pushed on the call stack. This can make recursion very time consuming since recursion usually adds a lot of method calls."
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).
I've worked a couple contracts at Microsoft and yea there are some prima donna douche bag like any big company. Additionally, when the oh so fussy project manager was a part time cam-whore, it's easy to laugh off bullshit.
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.
I feel compelled to counterbalance the slew of disconcerting responses by pointing out that some companies hold their employees to a code of ethics.
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.
NT
Thanks. I am getting sick of this simplistic urban legend. But I think there's more to it.
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.
And only an idiot would hire a PhD for a programming job.
If I'm interviewing a PHD for a position, it's not becuase I asked them. It's because they applied.
Is it fair to turn them away just because its like "hiring an MD to run urine tests?"
Basically, in practical terms they are just like junior programmers with really good analysis skills. If they are fine doing jobs that correspond to that skillset then I am fine reccomending a company hire them (which I have in the past).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Local variables will normally be pushed on the current stack frame inside the current function. With an optimizing compiler they can held in registers and pushed onto the stack during subroutine invocations. But in a situation like this, a decent compiler will recognize the overhead involved and simply keep them on the stack.
So your recursive calls, when they create new stack frames, are really just pushing the return address and the arguments.
What do you need to store in each entry in the FIFO queue? Aside from those same arguments, you will need a struct/class object to hold them. Plus the overhead of managing the queue.
So allocating each entry in the FIFO queue -- what's the cost of there? I'm unfamiliar with the C# internals, but under good o'l Linux/GNU/g++ malloc is NOT a negligible cost. Particularly when you are dealing with numerous small malloc's rather than one large malloc.
What is your memory model? Are there concerns about memory fragmentation? The last thing you want to do is to create swiss cheese. A situation where your software won't play nicely with other code in the same sandbox because there are no large chucks of contiguous memory left. (Perhaps unlikely in this scenario, but always a concern before you start allocating tons of small objects.)
Sure, stack space can be exhausted. But you can also exhaust your heap memory as your queue becomes very large. Believe it or not, under modern operating systems, at least under linux/unix, these two are the same size. Or at least they can be made the same size with ulimit.
Finally there is the issue of future code maintainability. Unless efficiency has been documented as a critical priority, keeping it simple is better.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Compile with gcc/g++ and -S, look at the assembly output, and draw your own conclusions.
"Anonymous. Slacking off at work..."
Why does this guy expect to be "sold"? I think it's the candidate's job to learn about the company. Anything a recruiter says is just a sales pitch.
I just finished a job search. I got called by many recruiters and went through many phone screens. I didn't feel surprised or offended by that - obviously the first step is sto phone screen a candidate.
Sorkin seems to think that if Microsoft is calling him, they must have already made the decision to hire. Not so. Even if you locate a strong-seeming candidate, it's unwise to skip any steps in interviewing.
Then Sorkin seems offended that Microsoft called him again. Why? People's situations change. It makes sense for an employer to keep phone numbers and try later. Maybe there was bad chemistry with one group but there could be good chemistry with another.
I guess the news story is that Sorkin is offended by totally ordinary hiring practices.
I'm a former Microsoft manager who has participated in over 200 interviews. I was also interviewed myself on several job moves within the company, and have been grilled by more than 75 interviewers who wanted to know what my skillset was. So I have a great deal of first-hand experience that I thought someone might find useful.
I won't defend the Microsoft interview practices, but I won't condemn them either. There are two huge benefits to this style of interviewing. First and foremost, it weeds out people with great resumes but who have made no real contribution to any kind of project, whether it was a school project or work project. I once had a guy hand me a diskette during an interview and he told me that it was some code that he worked on. I asked him where he had downloaded the code from, because I had no way of knowing if he wrote it himself or if he had just copied someone's work. I can put together a sweet portfolio of code in 15 minutes with Google. Microsoft wants people who can produce, and anyone who starts out every sentence by saying "Theoretically, it's possible..." is screwed.
The other big advantage to the Microsoft style of interviewing is that people who don't come from the "great institutions" of the world like MIT get a fair shot at a job. I went to a small, liberal arts college and my resume wasn't very impressive. But I had a key skill that they needed, I came in as a contractor, and within 6 weeks I had a full-time job with the company. I had a great 7 year run that I probably wouldn't have otherwise gotten.
But the system has it's downsides as well. One problem is that the interview system is applied universally across the company, and there are just some jobs that don't require deep technical thinking. It's inappropriate, for example, to use this technique on people who are primarily going to test software for a living. In fact, you want people who are more like "regular people" than programmers to test the code because then you'll get a better cross-section of the population involved in testing. I never respected a tester who told me that my program was broken because of some technical bug, but I sure listened if there were issues of usability involved.
Another problem with the interview system at Microsoft is that it's applied to internal candidates as well as external candidates, so your work history counts for very little when moving within the company. After a relatively long career in the company and getting sick of the group that I was in, I made one last attempt to change jobs. But I didn't have the heart to go through the long, arduous interview loops, so my heart wasn't in it. I really wanted to leave the company anyway and had a good excuse to do it, but there was nothing pulling me back in. After investing heavily in me as an employee who had gotten postive reviews throughout his career, I left Microsoft without anyone trying to convince me to stay.
One premise of this article is that Microsoft is arrogant. I agree that some individuals in the company are arrogant, and that some people use the interview process to prove that they are better than others, but as a whole I do not believe this to be true. I've personally dismissed people after the first interview because they just weren't going to cut it. Yes, that's judgmental, but it's also a very good business practice. Let's face it, even open source project discriminate based on ability.
I've saved my harshed criticism of Microsoft for last. In "the good old days", the interview bar was held high so that only "the brightest and the best" would be hired. In the late 90's (the dot com boom), the bar was lowered considerably so that we could get in enough bodies to do the work. But as a friend of mine likes to say "A pe
Microsoft are setting very generous baits all over the world to take anybody with a decent level of intelligence, experience and creativity out of circulation. Once trapped out of public view in the dungeons of MS Research, the poor geniuses rot intellectually so that they are no longer able to produce competing products.
I can't help but wonder how they feel now that they cannot claim a patent on that as a European business method.
I was working at one company for a long when I got a few emails from Microsoft recruiters. I just love them. I was able to the use the emails to get a better raise during my reviews. That wouldn't work now since the company decided that it wants cheap temps instead of experienced people.
For job in digital preservation:
"How would you preserve a WordPerfect document so that it would still be accessible to researchers in 100 years"
Me: "Acid-free paper".
Funnily enough, I got the job.
nt
You are not the only one getting a bit sick of this,
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.
Watch me build my house
Personally, I think that Microsoft bashing is counterproductive to the FOSS movement. Most people who use Microsoft software don't hate the company, although they do hate having to patch their systems all the time. The opportunity to "sell" regular users on FOSS comes from showing them how FOSS makes their lives better. Cheaper, faster, more secure, and no reboots are all great reasons to get someone to make the switch.
First I would organise a steering comittee
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
I once had a guy hand me a diskette during an interview and he told me that it was some code that he worked on. I asked him where he had downloaded the code from, because I had no way of knowing if he wrote it himself or if he had just copied someone's work
On that note, I'll tell you that you're a fucking liar. You obviously haven't worked at Microsoft, and you certainly don't get to stand in one place and accuse everyone you come across of plagarism (putting everyone else's burden of proof on themselves) and then stand here and ask us to believe this or any story (placing the burden of proof on everybody else again).
What a fucking joke.
If you have a square manhole cover, you can turn it 45 degrees on a vertical axis and drop it in the manhole.
If you have a circular manhole cover, you cannot get it in there. So you never have to send people down to retrieve manhole covers and/or workers with cracked skulls.
Really, people.
At my last job we put together an incredible group of people using technical interviews. We hired the smartest people we could find regardless of specific skills and/or experience. Money talks, bullshit walks. It's a great way to hire.
Like my technical writing instructor said, "Learn how to edit your work!" You write like you're having a hallway conversation.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
You worked on SFU ? Well, great ! I have a few questions for you :
1. Why did they used LDAP dn instead of plain group names in the msSFU35GroupMember attribute ? (not sure about attribute name, you get my drift)
2. Why is the User objectClass structural ? It could have been auxiliary of account, for example. That would have simplified my life a lot.
3. Why, ho why, did'nt they used RFC2307 for SFU ? Corrolary : why do they have to change attribute names with each release ? (prfix msSFU -> msSFU30 -> msSFU35)
:wq
I would have given him a technical "pop quiz", too. The fact that he has a doctorate makes no difference in the "plus" category, but every difference in the "negative" category. He's got a degree, great, he understands the theory, can he do the practical? Considering the recent reports of large cheating rings in colleges these days, does anyone really trust a degree that's put in front of them? This arrogance about degrees has got to go. Too often, they're just arrogant pricks who have spent 10 years learning theory from other people who've never worked in the field.
Poor baby, he got offered a job he didn't want. Man, and I thought they were being funny when the Simpsons asked, "Can't a guy walk down the street in this country without someone offering him a JOB?" Go back to school whiner, we'll all be happier.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Learn to spell "plagiarism" first, OK? Unless you pronounce it with a hard "g" in your neck of the woods? Don't worry, it's not plagiarism when you copy words from a dictionary!
Homer Simpson.
I'd bet a recruiter arranged the interview. PHDs get huge salaries, so some dumb-ass recruiter problably figured it was worth a shot to line up interviews for a bunch of PHDs. If one of them bites, that's money in the bank.
That said, my interview with MS [in 1995] was ridiculous. Basically some secretary went over a bunch of questions over the phone and would type in my answers. If any question was ambiguous or unclear, too bad. She didn't understand the subject matter. Her job was simply to read the Q's and record the A's.
Not that I had any particular aspirations to work for Billy G's evil empire, but the job marked sucked, and a paycheck's a paycheck.
The first thing that struck me was that the interviewer was the most boring person I had ever met. He had no social skills whatsoever, and I more or less had to lead him along in the conversation.
He told me NOTHING about working for Microsoft. Instead, he picked random things on my resume (the things on it that were LEAST interesting to, no less) and endlessly asked pointless questions about them.
At the end of the interview, he gave me a pen and paper and told me to implement some meaningless function to do something silly with the characters in a string (I forget what the actually silly thing to do was). I found the pointlessness of the coding exactly annoying, but the fact that I had to do it with a pen and paper was infuriating. I mean really, who writes code with a pen and paper?! I spent most of my time crossing things out and/or drawing arrows to reorder things, and many of my implementation decisions were based on reducing the risk of me having to rewrite the thing because I needed to insert a few lines where there was no room left on the paper.
Afterwards, the interviewer told me that he had never seen the function implemented that way before, and I never heard from him again.
cp /dev/zero ~/signature.txt
I'm not suggesting that you should be able to make a snap decision on someone after five minutes of technical shit-shooting; but honestly, if you're an established expert in your field, and the interviewing company has done the smallest measure of fact-checking and review of your resume, inane proficiency tests are demeaning to the everyone involved (IMO, it even marginalizes the field itself).
--- What
The problem with your logic here, and it's not necessarily a fault, it sounds like you're a physical scientist, is that you're not all that up on "best practices" among software engineers, a quality that Microsoft [at least believes its] employees exemplify. What most people cry about with regard to Microsoft interviews are the "CS 101" questions, which _are_ to some degree utterly banal to ask. The truth is, especially with regard to Microsoft, you're virtually never going to have to reverse a string, nor insert a node into a linked list that you define yourself. Between the Windows API, MFC, COM, .NET, et al there are a myriad of "more safe" ways to do these things that are more practical, and even in the event that you're working for a project writing code beneath the published APIs, you're certainly working with internal function libraries; writing quicksort on a whiteboard in front of people is really not analogous whatsoever. As has been mentioned elsewhere, modern software engineering is only moderately associated with "coding", a lot of it is integration, we're finally just getting over the hump of constantly reinventing the wheel.
--- What
From the article -
".... the company's extensive interview process works against hiring fresh thinkers.".
Why does everyone assume that firms like people with ideas ? Firms seem to be far more comfortable with malleable yes-men as opposed to nuisances with non-PHB-compatible ideas.
Just because that may have impacted why they were originally made that way, does NOT remove the other reasons why a round manhole cover is a good design.
Think laterally about this:
Pretend for the sake of argument that back in the 1890's it was actually easier to produce square manholes.
Would we still be using them? (Not sure)
Would they be better than a round one? (Certainly not)
I would expect that had that been the case, the first design would NOT have been the last design, as it wouldn't have been the best design. As it turns out, we hit on the best design first go, whether intentionally or as a side effect of the technologies available at the time.
Just because intrinsic benefits of a design weren't noticed when something was developed does not negate said benefits.
No Comment.
Yes, but is that a better design?
Doesn't really sound like it.
No Comment.
I've got some fucking news for Mr. Arthur "PhD" Sorkin: Employers have managed to obsolete or de-value experience. In far too many fields of work, if you don't have a degree, you're essentially unhireable.
But that system of superqualification -- once allowed to exist -- continues to expand.
Now, legions of Bachelor-level degree holders are finding out that employers are making their degrees worthless too. After all, if you can make a man's 20-year computer experience worth nothing, then a lousy 4-year college stint can also be declared "worthless".
So it continues. And so it will swallow people like him, eventually. His PhD is ONLY worth whatever employers say it is worth. Like millions of others, he probably tolerated those below him being dismissed due to the superqualification effect.
He can be as miffed as he wants. He probably wanted a system where education became of subjective worth. I hope he understands that perhaps, just maybe, in the future he will stand up for the absolute value of a person's experience and education, no matter what levels those are.
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
What you posted makes it look like you don't care if your code meets technical requirements, as long as the error messages are "usable". That's probably not the case, but if it is you richly deserve the bashing.
The NERVE of those people.
Toughen up, chump. Life sucks. Get a fuckin' helmet.
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
It's "a lot". To repeat, "A LOT". Two words. Got it? Christ.
A LOT
Many years ago, ok, not that many, early 99, I had a 3 round interview with M$ for an application development position, I had pitched myself, sent in a resume, gotten a response from them.
The first interview was over the phone, lasted about a half hour and was really just confirming who I am, what I can do, what I wanted to do, the normal interview yada yada.
The second was a M$ pitch session, the whole "what we can offer" and "who we are" gig, along with what I want to do in the future, where I want to go, that jazz.
The third one, was more of a "thinkers" sort of interview than technical, they didn't really ask me much about programming, or application design, but more logic puzzles, I had 2 interviewers for this one, each took turns throwing me a question, the lasy would ask me logic puzzles while the man was asking some fairly difficult "if I knew that I wouldn't be here" type Jeopardy questions.
Now after about 8 or so questions each, and about 3 hours of time, the lady asks me Einstein's Riddle, which is tough enough when given a week to work on it much less maybe an hour, but as I had done Einstein's Riddle several times already in college (do it once and the rest is just a slight modification to your original process) it was easy, she thought I cheated because I answered it in less than 5 minutes, although she was using an unmodified version of the riddle so I didn't quite cheat but I didn't quite do the problem, anyway so she now dislikes me, and the guy asks me to recite Pi to 100 characters, I asked him if he had it written down or knew it by heart so he could check my answer and surprisingly he answered an honest no, so I told him that anyone who bothers to memorize Pi to 100 characters has too much time on their hands, so I told him the C code to do the same thing, this made his fairly upset and he said I didn't answer his question, so my response of "Well, do you want me to do the same for E" started a fairly heated verbal confrontation that ended with him swinging at me, I thought what I said about his wife was hilarious, but I guess some people don't have a sense of humor.
I don't know if he lost his job, but I made damned sure he spent the night in jail, judge gave him like 600 hours of community service and he had to pay for my doctor bill for my broken nose.
So, while they might be able to offer a lot, they need to work on hiring people with a certain level of professionalism.
Didn't evn bother calling them back when they called and offered to redo the interview.
I find it amusing that the PhD in CS candidate thinks a company is arrogant when it follows its own interviewing process. Apparently he feels that they should bow, get on their knees and roll out the red carpet for one of his stature. I mean:
"c'mon, I'm Arthur Sorkin... with an 'A.r.t.h...' yes, that Arthur Sorkin. Where's my job offer with ridiculous salary, stock AND options? What's this? You want me to impress an individual contributor and answer standard benchmark questions to see if my mind works the way my resume claims it does? Well, I never!"
[storms off in a huff]
I've been burned too many times making assumptions on a resume. I always ask questions to allow a candidate to prove that they know what they claim and see how well they can describe their experience. It's not uncommon to find that a highly credentialed resume is wrapped around a non-thinking candidate that is unable to talk the walk their "experience" indicates they have.
These opinions guaranteed or your money back.
You seem to have also picked up some of Microsoft's quality assurance habits.
what the hell kind of IT job is that? Data entry, call center?
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I never was hired for SFU support, I just said the interview was good. The team was downsized after the position opeining was inadvertantly sent out.
I did, however, do extensive work in lending my strategic ideas to the teams that were involved in SFU marketing, and did provide some tech support for the product.
I am not entirely qualified to answer your questions as most of SFU is designed and developed in India, iirc.
However, regarding #3, I had suggested including some sort of RFC 2307-compliant AD extension with SFU. This was not done, I believe, because the idea was that the NIS gateway should be sufficient (which as we all know it was not). However, Microsoft Consulting Services was implimenting such extensions for customers on a case by case basis, and there is no reason why anyone with a basic understanding of extending the AD schema couldn't set something like this up and then reconfigure PAM to authenticate via Kerberos and NSSWITCh to pull info from AD. However, don't expect any help from PSS do do this because no team has both the mandate and the knowledge to help you do this (SFU has the knowledge but not the mandate). Or at least this is how it was when I was there.
I.e this is a known but low-priority deficiency in SFU.
As for the others, I my own honest impression is that the people who actually build the requirements for the extensions don't understand enough about large UNIX environments to see what would really be required. I.e. they can see some specs regarding NIS (which does not scale well), NFS, etc. but lack the experience with large environments to understand how the product would likely be used in the real world. But welcome to the world of large software companies where marketing, tech support, and development are all separate...
Now, many on the competitive strategy teams did have at least enough feedback to understand this but I suspect that they had other issues on their plate than SFU. So it falls on the service organization (MCS) to provide the solutions.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I talked to a couple of lower-level folks, got a short tour of the then-new 'campus', where all the offices had windows, and each area had free pop, etc (so no one had to ever leave to get food).
Then the 'big cheese' interview. He waved expansively at the building across the way, and said "400 of the world's best programmers work there". I said, "That's nice." He peered at me, and asked, "Do you want to work for Microsoft?" I said, "It would have been a waste of everyone's time for me to fly all the way out here from Michigan, if I wasn't interested".
After returning home, I received a job offer that was considerably less than I was currently making, but with a 'sweetener' of 1500 shares of pre-IPO MS stock at $1 a share. I reasoned that it wasn't worth uprooting my family and relocating, for a cut in pay, and I sure couldn't live off of worthless stock options, so I turned them down.
Every time I want to kick myself, I figure out how much those options would be worth these days...
Then why did I waste all that time sitting in traffic on the 405 every day, and why were there direct deposits into my bank account on the 15th and last day of the month with Microsoft's name on them?
I'm not quite sure how you made the determination that I am a liar based on my comment. Are you saying that you are absolutely certain that no one at Microsoft has every challenged anyone in an interview to document the source of a program that they claimed to have written?
...to think that you could know so much about a human based solely on where she works. MSFT has 60k employees worldwide. You're saying they've all sold their souls and aren't worthy of your no doubt impressive company?
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt by saying that it is you who are incredibly arrogant, whereas I feel most would say you're inexcusably callow.
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
It is definitely easier to roll a round manhole cover into place than it is to lift a square one into place.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
So, unless they were making him do an hour-long test, the questions were probably so easy that Mr. Ph-friggin-D could have done them in no time flat. But instead of showing the "arrogant" morons up by completing it faster than anyone else, he gets all pissy about going through the same process EVERYONE ELSE goes through? Because it's above him? PhD or not, I don't want anyone working for me who is going to do shit like that. Of course I want my employees to know all the shit I don't -- otherwise I wouldn't need them -- but I don't want one who thinks anything related to his job is beneath him. Otherwise, he could be slouching on the parts of projects that don't interest him.
I don't mind having a test being required for a job, but that's not the issue. The issue is they invited him then when he got there they wanted him to take a test. He didn't ask for a job, they asked him to come without explaining what was entailed.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I'm not quite sure how you made the determination that I am a liar based on my comment.
Quoth you: ``I once had a guy hand me a diskette during an interview and he told me that it was some code that he worked on. I asked him where he had downloaded the code from, because I had no way of knowing if he wrote it himself or if he had just copied someone's work.''
In other words, you don't have any credibility, so you're a fucking liar until you prove otherwise.
Then why did I waste all that time sitting in traffic on the 405 every day, and why were there direct deposits into my bank account on the 15th and last day of the month with Microsoft's name on them?
More lies.
I think that the whole point of that section that I was trying to make is that Microsoft would be better hiring more non-technical testers. There would be more "real world" users closer to the software. I'll be the first to admit that what seems intuitive to me may not work well for anyone else. Feedback on usability is much more important than feedback on perceived design flaws.
Ok, I get it now. Sorry for being so slow. Thanks for the clarification.
Sounds like the Microsoft interview process weeded out an unqualified candidate. There is more to a job than a college degree does not qualify you for everything. Microsoft's innovative, though controversial, hiring practices turned out in this case to find out that what may have looked like a good candidate on paper to HR (or more likely, some suck at Volt) turned out to be an unemployable liability.
I was hired into a fairly high level position this calendar year that was advertised as a technical position.
So far this year my main duties have consisted of shuffling papers, updating spreadsheets and making small tweaks to marketing collateral to substitute for an awol Program Manager who's "taking some time off".
Silly person that I was, I looked at the position title and description and thought I was being hired for a technical position, what with having an MSCS and 10+ years of progressive experiencee in technical areas. Turns out that they needed a technical admin assistant really badly, because they're short on headcount in that area right now, so being the newbie, that's the straw I drew -- as I found out only after I walked in the door my first week.
Don't even ask me about my review score this year. I haven't even had work to do at the level at which I was hired, because I'm so busy trying to get done this non-automatable-for-political-reasons lower level busy work, so I can't excel review (and bonus) wise.
They really should hire DeVry grads to do some of the work they're hiring people with Master's degrees to do these days. But they won't. One issue appears to be an organizational push to bring candidates in at higher levels. The problem is that SO much of the work that has ben created for people to do, is lower-level busy work that no MSCS has any business doing.
Are you interviewing at Microsoft? Let my experience be a lesson to you: Interview the groups you talk to NO LESS RIGOROUSLY than they interview you.
I once got a letter from Microsoft recruiter inviting me to some particular group. They read my blog and found that I'm smart (I really am).
I immediately replied in a way "Thanks a bunch... but I like my current job bla-bla". I got a response stating that they found that my qualification was not enough. Apparently message was kind of a standard template and HR person did not find any better than send totally unrelated crap in reply.
Morons, I say. That thing alone is enough to alienate me from this company forever.
I've never heard a local say "the 405" rather than just "405". Certainly traffic reports never do. Did you just move here?
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(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? &@!#**!@ THING!!!
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(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail? I HATE BILL!!!
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#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com