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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.)"
Or, that he was interviewing for completely different positions.
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.
One of the best advice I ever got was:
Remember, no matter how great of a thing you create, unless someone sells it it will be forgotten.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Not saying that Google doesn't want money, but it doesn't seem to be all that matters to them.
Playing devil's advocate, you could also say "Not saying that Microsoft isn't technical, but it doesn't seem to be all that matters to them".
To be fair, a lot of companies underestimate the ability for tech people to have good communication skills, for both inside the company and without. When you have big companies like Microsoft and Google, to have a good infrastructure, you need good communication. This just shows that, for one reason or another, Microsoft has chosen to focus on this in their current hiring process.
Honestly, they both want / need money and tech to stay in business.
"Intelligence has nothing to do with politics!"
-Londo Mollari
Just some ivy league brat who didn't nail his first interview, and wanted a way to bitch.
Ah yes, Purdue - the forgotten Ivy.
I agree with the rest though - worthless article.
I don't care how technical you are if you can't explain what you are doing to others. You need to be able to explain what you are going to do during design phase, so that others can make sure it fits in with the pieces they are working on. You need to explain what you are doing to production support teams, so that they can understand the system well enough to support it. Also, depending on the type of project you are working on, you will probably need to explain some of it to people who do user manuals, phone support documents, training documents etc. There are several different levels of explanation that need to be done and you better be able to explain your application to all of them.
My company home page
It's possible microsoft, having been in business a while, isn't as starved for technical people as it is for people who can explain what all the technical people just did. Making a product doesn't do you any good if you can't communicate what that product does, and how it would be useful.
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.
That actually sounds much better than the usual "puzzle-style" interview questions I hear. I'd personally begin by asking for high-level details. What applications do you have in mind? Alternatively, are you looking for a specific sort of boat? Without knowing the first thing about boats, there are obvious orders-of-magnitude design, process, and resource differences between building a kayak, say, and an oil tanker. Note here that I'd be careful to avoid detailed design or requirement questions: by my own admission, I don't know how to build boats, so the resulting "requirements discussion" would almost surely be "bike-shedding."
Next, given that there's (presumably) a well-established industry selling ____ boats, why are we assuming at the outset that we should build rather than buy? Suppose the answer is "we're not an end-user, our business plan involves breaking into boat manufacturing."
Fair enough. Then doing profitability requires both building and selling boats in a market with established players, and, by our (my) own admission, we (I) don't yet know how to build a boat, let alone do so well enough to make a manufacturable and marketable product (not to mention the highly nontrivial matters of actual marketing and manufacturing "at scale"). So unless we already have a crack boat-design team at our disposal (in which case, why are you asking me?) it might bewiser, at least for a few years, to get our feet wet by OEMing third-party boats, building something related but less ambitious like "boat accessories", etc., before committing to full-on "boat-building."
And so on. Presumably this is the sort of discussion they want to hear?
An interview is a two way process.
Many of us wouldn't work for a company that had such a one sided view of things. I want a better job. The company wants the best employee. I'm happy to prove I'm the best employee, but they have to prove they're the best employer. If they want me to jump through hoops, then clearly they want a trained poodle and not an experienced software developer.
In that sense I agree with you. We're clearly not going to get on.