Interviews

It’s been so long. More than half a month. But I can’t even tell you how busy I’ve been. I finished Nanowrimo, took three finals (so far), finished going to all my classes … It’s weird thinking about how this is my last fall semester here at the university. It’s weird to think that next semester I won’t be registering for classes. It’s weird to think I’ll be graduating.

Speaking of graduating, I’ve obviously been going on lots of interviews for lots of different companies. Full time interviews are scary, especially for computer science. You have to say the right thing, write the right code, and smile in the right way. Interviews, quite frankly, are a really bad way to find out whether a person is a good fit for the company and whether the company is a good fit for the person. But it’s a necessary evil, I think, because how else would we do it? You know how in high school, those college baseball or whatever recruiter people come to sports games and watch people play for awhile? I feel like that’s maybe a better way to find out. Have job recruiters come in and follow you around for a few days to discover whether you’re a good person.

I’m just kidding. That’s just kind of scary.

Funny stuff aside, the best piece of interviewing advice I ever got was during my ExxonMobil interview. Despite not getting an offer from them, I really enjoyed chatting with them, both at the career fair and during the interview. I think when I first started talking with them, I knew and they knew that I wasn’t the right fit for that kind of company. So we just sort of threw off the formalities and chatted about life, which was really nice.

I remember he told me, “As you continue on through your interviews, make sure you’re interviewing the company as much as they’re interviewing you. If you’re not impressed with the company, then you’re not going to enjoy the job, no matter how much they pay or how much prestige you get.”

It’s so completely true. The worst interview I ever had was my first one with Microsoft. I wanted to share my experience because it was really, really bad. I like Microsoft okay, and I especially like DirectX and the Xbox, but as a company, well, they really need Bill Gates back. Working for Microsoft would be really cool, and is one of those things that all CS majors wish they could do for at least a couple years, and I was fortunate enough to have them actually seek me out instead of having to go to them.

My interviewer was named Yves. If you ever have a Microsoft interview with a guy named Yves, be very, very careful. He has no sense of humor. If you read about MS interviews online you’ll read about how cool they are - Microsoft is famous for their “Why are manhole covers round?” question as well as lots of fun types of thinking problems. But mine? Mine wasn’t fun at all. In fact, it was one of the worst experiences of my life.

First of all, the interviewer was five minutes late to a half an hour interview. Because of this, he rushed the entire interview as if it were my fault. I showed up ten minutes early and ended up waiting for him for fifteen minutes. The career services lady had to actually go and look for him.

I walked into the interviewing room which was just a small room with a lamp overhead. I jokingly asked if it was an interrogation room and he just looked at me. We sat down and he started off by introducing himself and asking me if I knew anything about the position I was applying for, which was program management. I told him I knew it was about solving problems, about seeing a program being developed from beginning to end, and about overseeing a team. He said, “Hmm, that’s not quite right,” and made some notes on a piece of paper.

That was the first sign of warning bells in my head. What I had said WAS correct - that’s what program managers do. However, something I had said obviously wasn’t sufficient to him.

He asked if I had ever been to Seattle and I said no, although I have been in Washington. He explained where Microsoft was located in relation to the rest of the city and then proceeded to ask that if Steve Ballmer came up to me and asked me to oversee the move of Microsoft campus from the suburbs to the middle of the city, how would I do it?

Knowing that Microsoft interviewers were supposed to have a good sense of humor, I said we would use giant forklifts to pick up the buildings and then use rafts to float them across the river.

He was not amused. He kept writing stuff down, and then said, “That’s not possible.”

I said, “I know, it was a joke.”

He paused, then said, “How about we assume you can’t do that.”

So, I continued, and the entire time I was feeling more and more like everything I was saying was somehow unsuitable. He questioned every single thing I said, almost to the point of mocking me. I couldn’t figure out at all what he was getting at - every answer I would give he would say, “Is that really what you want to do?”

The next question he asked was to implement a C function. C! It was true I had mentioned finishing a project in C but rarely do interviewers ask about a particular language - usually it’s just pseudo-code. I tried my best and when I finished he said, “Hmm. Make it more efficient.” Not even a single other comment on what I had written. I couldn’t think of any way to make it more efficient so he asked me to test it.

Mind you, I was applying as a program manager position, not a coding position at all.

By the end I was so upset and demoralized that I didn’t go to class. It was a terrible experience and I never want to go through that again. I just want to say - Microsoft is a fine company but they really need to find better interviewers, interviewers that actually care about the people they’re interviewing enough to grant them some common courtesy. Going to an interview for a career is a stressful enough experience without having the interviewers make it worse.

So interviewing has been stressful in some ways and good in others, but I’m never going to forget my Microsoft interview. I am never again going to let interviewers push me around like that. And I advise you all to do the same once you start looking for jobs.

December 6, 2008 @ 2:04 pm . Comments (6)

General — Tags: bill gates, computer science, nanowrimo, real life

Bill Gates is rich, but he’s got more than money

As a computer science major, I’m sometimes interested in technology (sometimes :P). Yesterday I read Fortune’s 7 July article “Gates After Microsoft.” It was one of the best articles I’ve read about technology meets real life in a long time. Reading it, I got a good sense of Bill Gates and it made me feel much better about myself and my own beliefs and thoughts.

Bill Gates is an incredible guy. According to the article, “he has pledged to give back to humanity all but a tiny fraction of 1% of that fortune.” He’s rich but generous. His own mother wrote, “‘From those to whom much has been given, much is expected.’” But my favorite part of the article was the emphasis that Bill Gates focuses more on just Microsoft and software. The article states:

“For the first time since he quit Harvard to start Microsoft 33 years ago, Gates is going to have the time to indulge in what his father calls his ‘world-class curiosity.’”

Computer science is filled with a lot of different people, but the one thing I have learned about my major is that most of the people there are single-minded young males. They focus a lot on programming and little on much else. And the thing that gets to me quite often is that they’re good at it - very good. I can program but not as well as they can, and when it comes to experience I’ve got very little because I don’t program outside of class and they do.

So there’s always been this sort of inferiority, this lack of confidence. I get a little nervous about grades and about my future, about my lack of programming experience. But when I read something like this, I get excited. Bill Gates started Microsoft because of ‘world-class curiosity.’ His “greatest pleasure seems to be finding connections among things he’s interested in.” The article doesn’t say his greatest pleasure is programming, or running a business, but finding connections between things he’s interested in.

The article goes on to talk about how he’s curious about everything from law to corn prices to malaria to immunology, and others. Bill Gates doesn’t focus primarily on software - he enjoys learning about everything. It’s a boost - a huge boost - to know that one of the richest men in the world loves learning about a lot of things. I myself am interested in books and creative writing and design and fashion and a million other things, and I feel like that’s okay when I read stuff like this.

Bill Gates has always been a guy I’ve looked up to but now I have even more reason to admire him.

July 18, 2008 @ 5:03 pm . Comments (0)

Technology — Tags: bill gates, computer science