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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."
"How Would You Move Mount Fuji?"
/mnt/fuji /dev/null
mv
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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.
mv /mnt/fuji /dev/null
If you wanted to get the job with MS, you would have to change that to:
move "C:\Mount Fuji" C:\RECYCLEDSometimes you've gotta roll the hard six.
``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."
My ph.d. isn't in CS (I don't do any programming) but I think the answer is ``shoot the hostage."
"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." - H.L. Mencken
I would hire 20,000 temporary staff for a period of 5-15 years, without ever offering to hire them on permanently. Then, I would issue each of them a teaspoon and canoe. These would be deducted from their first paycheck of course, at full retail price. The teaspoon serves 2 functions, as a paddle for the canoe, and when they arrive at Mt Fuji, as their shovel. It is true that Mt. Fuji is made more of rock than anything resembling soil, but I expect my employees to not need a babysitter, I hired them to figure these things out. Once they have their teaspoon filled with 0.0000000000001% of Mt. Fuji, then they have to canoe back to where ever, and deliver the teaspoonful. There would then be paperwork to fill out.
On second thought, Mt. Fuji is still somewhat active, might be best to have them sign a disclaimer, in case they are lavanated.