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Google Vs. Microsoft: a Tale of Two Interviews
jfruh writes "You might be a bit jealous of Andrew Weiss: fresh out of college, he got interviews with both Microsoft and Google. He discusses (to the extent NDAs allow) the differences between the two experiences, ranging from the silly (Google's famous gourmet cafeteria vs. Microsoft's gaming room) to the serious (Google's technical emphasis vs. Microsoft's focus on explanatory and consulting skills.)"
In before the MyCleanPC garbage. It's starting to get really bad, seriously.
3 on-site interviews means a FAIL of epic proportions. If you do passably it's no less than 5.
...and after all that he got the wrong job :(
Google is wanting to you to be technical and MS only cares about how well you can talk.
Which only goes to show that Google cares about the tech stuff, and MS just cares to make money.
Not saying that Google doesn't want money, but it doesn't seem to be all that matters to them.
MS on the other hand, that is all that matters to them.
Be seeing you...
in 3...2...1 "I can't wait to start my job -- every day will be a new adventure"
He went in unprepared for possible the toughest IT interview of his life and he did not get the position. BIG SURPRISE. then he had some job leads spoon fed to him, interviewed at a few other places and nailed the MS interview. the end. saved you the 45 seconds it takes to read it. the position at MS was more MIS/marketing, and they asked "softer" questions, big whoop. Just some ivy league brat who didn't nail his first interview, and wanted a way to bitch.
Having been an intern at both, and gone through at least the intern version of their interviews, I didn't see a huge difference. Can you solve problems? How do you approach different types of problems? Simply put, did your education (both formal and personal) teach you enough to know the important things that any software engineer should know? Communication is incredibly important, and your ability to communicate how you are solving the problems and dealing with issues factors in quite a bit.
Once inside, they do have different cultures, goals, focus, but as far as getting in, I feel there's very few people who would be hired by one, but not the other.
I thought this article might actually be interesting. Instead, it was just shit. I suck at one interview, and got good, and did good on the next one. This one was almost as worse as the one about taking your kid to the forest for school.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Well if Google wins against Microsoft i could lead to problems: 1.Microsoft could go out business.(I hope they don't because I have one.) 2.Microsoft might not do anything and could go out of business.(Refer to problem number 1.) Now if Microsoft wins against Google,Google might not do anything about it.
Fired for blogging.
After all those years in college, you don't want to end up in an advertisement company, spying on your users. Admittedly, the tech is cool, but many if not all things this company does can be done easily on a much smaller scale on your own little server. Now that I'm thinking about it... what is so cool about this tech? They
provide boring office supplies, belonging in the category of paperclips, noteblocs, and staplers.
One of the unique aspects of my time in Redmond was the interview environment. In between interviews, I was in a room filled with music, video games, and movies. While it may sound unheard of, it actually worked in my favor helping to keep my mind off things for a bit.
Entry interview: you'll need to dodge alien laser beams.
Exit interview: you'll need to dodge flying chairs.
I agree, making a profit is immoral! It might be better to just get a doctorate and work at a university, at least then he can expand knowledge without exploiting anyone.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
No job offer then?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Here's my experience in Google vs Amazon
In summary, Google's interviews don't get a flying rats behind about anything but microbenchmarks on small pieces of code. Amazon cared more about technical design but started asking me questions on the Linux Kernel (I was applying for Java Engineer position)
Some more odds:
One of the Google interviews disagreed with me that a Java HashSet was not Big O(1) for the contains() method when I wrote out my sample code. I pointed out (very kindly) that I believe HashSet is backed by HashMap in Java, which is constant time. He said he didn't think that was true and I conceded and said, "I can assume then for now that it is not constant time then." I was extremely polite, but I'm fairly certain that cost me the job.
The Amazon interview didn't go after they started asking me the internals of the Linux kernel. Then, the gentlemen asked me to implement a C function. I stopped him immediately after he was done speaking and said, "There must be a mistake, while i'm more than willing to attempt this in C, I thought I was applying for a Java position." He said he didn't know Java and asked me to implement atoi() in Java then. Needless to say he wasn't satisfied with any iteration of my Java code and made it a point that C was far superior to Java when we were done.
I really wanted the Google job, and I feel I was definitely qualified. What makes me feel better about it I guess is that it seems some Googlers couldn't pass the Google interview.
Well, that was a fairly lame article...
Anyway, I interviewed with Microsoft back in 1989 or 1990, and it appears that things have changed since then. Back then, they definitely were more focused on technical questions. I don't remember anyone asking anything about customers or business or communications. It was all technology, with a bit of design thrown in. The position wasn't even a hard-core programming job. Since I was a few years out of college, the customer/business/communications questions would have been nice, since I would probably would have been better positioned to answer those than the college seniors, as my then current job had me working with customers a lot. Their recruiting group was horribly disorganized back then also -- they switched recruiters and the job at the last minute, so no one (myself, the recruiter, the interviewers) was properly prepared. I suppose they've probably fixed that since then... One of the weirdest things was the "cult of Bill" -- whenever you asked a question, the answer seemed to always be prefaced with something like, "Well, Bill thinks that..." Even questions that had nothing to do with technology or Microsoft, like "what do people in Redmond do for fun?" "Well, Bill thinks that being fit and active helps the brain, so a lot of us like to mountain bike..."
The MS job was about business skills and Google was about tech skills.
Now to be fair we need to have tech job at MS vs tech job at goolge.
But this maybe telling that college CS is not good for some tech job at least at MS but the same CS is what google may want for tech jobs.
I think that MS is better as they see that CS is NOT IT.
I have a few friends at both places. At MS, the style and topics of an interview can change from team to team, and from internal organization to organization. From what I hear, at Google it's a little different in that you get interviewed by a wide variety of folks, and then teams "bid" on you based on your interview results and strengths/weaknesses, so the technical interview experience there is largely the same for every candidate.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
I interviewed at MS while I was a grad student in math, and I was astounded at the experience. While the HR guy who interviewed me on campus and then flew me to Redmond was very positive, upbeat, and encouraging, the only thing I can think about the engineer who interviewed me is: "What an asshole." He would ask me a question, then while I answered he would turn his back to me, face his computer and answer email.
I was bright and eager and thought it would be fun to move across the country and stop being a starving student, but even at that young age I new I could never work for a company that treated me like garbage while trying to woo me!
I dunno. I was the last on-campus interviewee before lunch, and maybe the recruiter wanted one invite under his belt before he went out and drank his lunch, so maybe I really was unqualified.
I've interviewed at Google, and at Microsoft, as well as a few other technical places, for similar positions. The interview process was very similar. Stand in front of a white board, solve and then code a small problem. Or discuss design. I think the biggest difference is lunch was not exactly an interview with Google, but it was with Microsoft.
I was very interested to read your post, having just recently interviewed with both Amazon and Google.
Here's my experience with each. Amazon was four 45-minute interviews, with a 15 minute break between each. Clearly they had decided on the problems for each candidate beforehand, as each interviewer asked a different question or two about my previous experiences and then a technical question that took the remainder of the interview time. I was also given the opportunity to ask about their experiences, which was actually quite illuminating as it was clear their past projects heavily influenced each technical question they asked.
Google was five hour-long interviews with only a minute break or so between them. Additionally, there was an hour-long guided lunch after the third interview. My first interviewer gave me a rundown of how the process worked (in particular, they had a sheet keeping track of what problems I had been asked that was passed on to each subsequent interviewer) and then each interview pretty much was 100% dedicated to solving a technical problem. The only person who asked anything about my previous experience and gave me any information about the workplace culture was my lunchtime interviewer. From what I gathered, it sounds like after a training session most developers are put into an interview rotation, which I suppose makes sense when one considers the number of applicants they must have. As a result, my last interview also had an observer present, presumably in training.
I won't talk about the questions asked except to indicate that both companies asked interesting and engaging technical questions - only one of which (Google's "warm up question") I'd seen on glassdoor or other interview question lists. But Amazon seemed much more interested in my experience in addition to my technical abilities, whereas talking to Google was more like taking a standardized exam.
When I interviewed at Google, I was struck by how my main interviewer had no work life balance after he moved to Google. He talked about all of the things he used to do - hiking, mountain biking, etc. When I talked to him in more detail about some of his favorite hikes and rides, it became apparent that they were all done before he went to Google and that he no longer has time. Then as I talked to the rest of the team members I found the same thing - their lives revolve around Google. And as I looked around I saw all of the great amenities that are geared toward keeping you on-campus - great food, free laundry, haircuts, oil changes, gym, swimming pool, etc. You could literally live at the office and have everything you need.
That's when I realized that I didn't want to work there. They wanted to bring me back for another interview for a team member that wasn't there for the first one, but I declined and took another job.
While working at SUN, I had been interviewed once by Microsoft and then by Google (at G three times overall in the past few years). I aced the MS interview and they wanted me there. Google told me, that they almost hired me after the first interview (told me about it a few years later though) - I have solved some problems that nobody has solved during an interview before - it was not enough though. Somehow I managed to end up in NOKIA, and now I have to move out as NOKIA is imploding. What a pity, N9 rocks and there were so many hopes around MeeGo and Qt...
MS: You have to be assertive. I think they wanted me because I was arguing heavily with the development boss of the whole product range and convinced him that my non-typical solution was better - and it was impressive to see how a confident and cocky person admitted he was wrong and ended up like a best friend - we had a really nice smalltalk at the end of the interview... Technical questions were quite OK, but not that difficult (after a brutal training at SUN). Usually some concurrency, linked list algorithms, Warcraft data structures :D and the emphasis was on not making mistakes in the whiteboard code. The interview was very relaxing (comparing to my job at SUN), I even told MS' HR that it was really easygoing day that shocked her...
Google: Few years ago, it was the most exciting interview ever - puzzles, extremely difficult combinatorial problems solvable via dynamic programming, pressure, interviewers interrupting flow of thoughts just to make you feel uncomfortable, just pure craziness, and I loved it! Two years ago it was just slightly more difficult than the MS interview (I think one problem was using dynamic programming, otherwise it was the same as MS), no puzzles anymore :-( And very recently, it was a much much simpler interview, however a jetlag after flying over to California from Europe and inability to sleep more than 3 hours before interview did not help to be responsive...
One strong difference between MS and Google was that to my surprise, the people at MS appeared to be happier than Googlers. No idea why, but none of the Googlers I met ever smiled...
If you are like me and perform better when you are challenged than on "easy" tasks where you can make silly mistakes, try Facebook, they still do puzzles (Puzzle Master). There are other interesting companies that would challenge you, for example Crytek, Valve, JetBrains, SpaceX, Cloudera etc.
He was interviewing for different positions in the 2 companies.
Probably a developer post in Google and a consultant post in Microsoft. Microsoft's interviews for the product developer post are fully technical.
This question was asked to me years ago in a Microsoft interview, and has been bugging me since. I am curious as to what other people here on /. would have responded, and more importanly, the 'why' behind the response.
Here is the question:
Say I were to hire you today, and gave you the choice between two compensation packages, which one would you choose (and why)?
1: A standard salary of $100k
2: An hourly wage of 10 cents an hour - but every month that you worked here, we would double your hourly wage
Which would you prefer?
About an hour for each interview.
Lots of tough brain teasers and other bullshit which we hardly ever used on a day to day basis.
Other posters are right, average pay with golden benefits and if you can find better then GTFO and do so. I did.
Honestly I would not go through that again, I felt violated after the process- kind of rude when you think about it, it's not like they're giving you a job on the grace of their hearts, you're giving them a service and they're paying you for it.
Next time I meet an Amazonian you can bet I'll be just as annoyingly nice as they were whilst trying to trip me up.
Did anyone else find this silly?
"
Did they like my problem solving and rationalization skills?
"
Yes - you must constantly rationalize the BS in a work environment - therefore you should have good rationalization skills
In most companies each person in the committee has his/her own style of questioning and sets of questions. So it would be quite a stretch to extrapolate from a few anecdotes about the interview to estimate the company policy. I know one guy who was fixated on the area of a 2D polygon and the point in-or-out test for a 2D polygon. There was another who would always ask for reversing a char string without temp storage, would not let go till he makes the interviewee agrees using recursion and double XOR is one hell of a trick. Then he would let the dazed applicant go with a self satisfied smile. Then there was this guy who was proud of scoring 800 in GRE analysis. All his questions would come out of mensa puzzle books. So unless your sample size is large, do not extrapolate from interview anecdotes to company policies.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
If you are an American then it doesn't matter because the job is going to an H1B.
I suspect that a large part of the 'interview` process is for the interviewer to pick the brains of the latest batch of graduates and then present the re-hashed new ideas as their own to senior management.
AccountKiller
Ok, so.... not to say anything bad about IT, just... this is just about an IT job interview. I'm sure a MUCH more interesting story would be about an Engineering Interview. Additionally, this seems more an article that the submitter managed to land a hefty number of /. hits. Nothing to read here... please, for the sake of your brain and all organs involved in making a memory, move along.
"Associate Consultant at Microsoft" LOL!!!! Guess everybody has to start somewhere, though.
lol
Had fun at MSFT. Didn't make it to the final GOOG interview. Amazon pestering me now, but who the *heck* wants to go to the other side of the country for doing the same stuff I am doing now?
When can we telecommute? I axe.
So far nothing to be jealous about. I would be jealous if Andrew himself create a solution that sets on the pedestal along with those 2 companies. Because unless your the founder or the CEO, the credit for the job you've done as an employee always goes to the company and not on you. So think big and be an entrepreneur. http://www.pezahub.com/
I just wrapped up about two months of interviewing with Google, Oracle, Amazon, Facebook and a couple bay area 'adolescent' startups. Google was the only bad experience. They seem to only run interviews that are geared to someone just out of school.... which is not me. I've got about 14 years of experience at this point. I had 4 phone interviews that stretched out over about six weeks and at the end.. I still never had a 'normal' conversation with anyone I spoke to. Normal in the sense of other interviews where they ask about your background.. things you have done etc. I was repeatedly ask in depth technical questions about stuff I never claimed to know... and not so much about the stuff I did claim to know. It was very bizarre and frustrating.
All the other interviews with all the other companies went very well and I ended up with offers from FB, Oracle and Amazon... and I just accepted one of them.