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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."
"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'
Must be one hell of a player!
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Thats right. A PhD in CS does not make a great programmer. A PhD trains and qualifies you to carry out research. A PhD creates knowledge instead of regurgitating it.
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
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
``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
> What, you think because you have a PhD, your feces doesn't stink? Guess what -- it does.
> When I worked for a particular company, we instituted a "programmer intelligence test". It didn't test nonsense like "Define Polymorphism", it had questions where they actually had to think like a programmer. I found that the more educated the person, the worse they did on the test!
I don't suppose it occurred to you that there's more to CS than programming.
Did you give these educated people a chance to ask you some questions that require thinking like a PhD?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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
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.
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
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.
Dude. You always fill out an application for a job, EVEN if invited for it. Its HR paperwork. He withdrew his "application" from the HR process after he decided he didn't want the offered job. He didn't send them a resume hoping for a job.
Have you never actually had a job before? I've had jobs handed to me, and then had to go through the whole process of being "interviewed", background check, tons of paperwork, etc. Large corporations have to show they hired fairly, hence even when a job is specifically for you, you still have to be chosen acceptable for the job by the HR folks.
Because the job market isn't tight. I recently got voluntary severance. I'd say 1/3 of the companies I applied to wanted to interview me, and I got cold contacted based on my resume several times. I found a job paying 15% more in under a month of searching. Unless you're coming straight out of college, or believe that HTML is programming, the job market is currently very good.
Even if it was poor, the company would need to sell itself to me. Thats what the interview process is for- for both sides to sell themselves. I need to convince the other company that they want me. They need to convince me that I will enjoy working there. If we don't both convince the other, we each try again.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
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
Considering that PhD's are overqualified to teach CS 101, asking those types of questions are a straight insult.
Why take it as an insult? Perhaps the interviewer is forced to ask the question regardless of the candidate. It could also just be a test of arrogance, sometimes in the real world you're asked to do jobs that you might consider beneath you. Don't think a manager wants an employee that says "PhD's don't fill out TPS reports"
Besides if it's an easy question just answer and move on.
Morons do not get PhD's.
No, but people with no practical knowledge sometimes do. At least in physical sciences you can spend your graduate career focused on theory and similuation, without any actual hands-on experimentation. I'm assuming CS might have something similar where stuff is just described on paper with no actual coding done.
And no hand holding will get you that far.
There are some PhD's who just do what their professor tells them, that's what I mean by hand holding. Doesn't mean the person getting the degree is stupid, they've just never had to think creatively.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
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.
Are you kidding?
u32 vote32(u32 x, u32 y, u32 z) {
return (x & y) | (y & z) | (x & z);
}
For those who were wondering what a solution might be (I saw some attempts but didn't care much for them)..
// if this ends up as 2 or 3, we will turn place value bit on
// throw out lower place values
// throw out higher place values
// see if remaining bit is equal, if so increase vote count
#include <cmath>
using namespace std;
DWORD Vote (DWORD storedvalue[3])
{
DWORD result = 0;
for (int i = 31; i >= 0; i--)
{
int votes = 0;
for (int j = 0; j < 3; j++)
{
DWORD temp = storedvalue[j];
temp = temp / pwr(2,i);
temp = temp % pwr(2,i);
if (temp == pwr(2,i))
votes++;
}
if (votes >= 2)
result = result + pwr(2,i);
}
return result;
}
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.
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'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