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Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

businessinsider.fr

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Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#31

Post by derefr »

BurningFrog wrote: post #25
derefr wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget also: round manhole covers are a Schelling point. Making a manhole cover round is one of the first intuitive shapes you'd think to make them (along with squares and rectangles); and so you'd guess, as a construction company gearing up to sell the concept of concrete manholes with removable iron-plate covers to a municipality (back in the 1800s or whenever we first got them) that what the municipality wil…

Thanks for explaining why roads are round!

More like, why we got four-way intersections for so long before anyone tried roundabouts. It was intuitive to just drive one road through another, and then we added traffic laws and signalling on top to try to make it work, rather than anyone sitting down at the start to try to work out what intersection shape would optimize for traffic flow and [non-]accident rate.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#32

Post by kabdib »

kerng wrote: post #22
coralreef wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google stopped asking brainteaser questions like that because they found no correlation in its hiring usefulness.

I think it's true for majority of questions (apparently leetcoding is the new thing at Google and also FB). IMHO interning for a few weeks is the best for both sides - unfortunately it doesnt scale.

Interning "for a few weeks" means that you miss out on candidates who already have perfectly good jobs. These are often the folks that you are trying to hire.

So imagine how a candidate reacts to, "Well, while we know you're happy where you are, what would you think about quitting your current job so you can try out a position at our company for a few weeks?" (Note that candidates can't use vacation time just to do a try-out, for legal reasons, and may be reluctant to use up all their vacation time in any event).

Having a trial period puts all the risk on the candidate, and guarantees you're filtering out people that you'd otherwise want.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#33

Post by m0zg »

Retric wrote: post #7
WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the round manhole covers just to make sure they can't fall in?

It’s actually several things. It’s stronger, cheaper, rolls, lighter, no need for alignment etc. You can make sure any shape does not fall in, but strength to weight ratio is important as you want people to open them with hand tools while supporting dump trucks. PS: At ~250 lb you can see why a less optimal shape might be a problem.

It's also utterly irrelevant to the software engineering profession.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#34

Post by 13of40 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #23
coralreef wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google stopped asking brainteaser questions like that because they found no correlation in its hiring usefulness.

I'll be the obligatory ex Googler claiming Google never did ask brainteaser questions, or at least they were long gone by 2006.

Puzzle questions were definitely against company policy and at least ones unrelated to coding were rare by that time at Microsoft, too.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#35

Post by Matthias247 »

billsix wrote: post #30
13of40 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a linked list interview question going around back then that went: In constant time, without allocating memory, given a pointer to the first element of a linked list, how can you tell if it eventually ends in a null or if it loops back on itself at any point? I actually ended up implementing the solution while tracking down a hang in a DCOM service I was working on...

In constant time? O(1)?

Isn’t that normally the 2 pointers (tortoise/hare) thing? If yes then I agree it’s not constant time.

I personally hate this kind of interview question. It’s one that is easily answerable when one heard the exact question before (in training for interviews). But super hard to answer if not. And it even does not have big applications in practice - in 20years of programming, I never encountered a problem like this. In the end the question just wastes time on both sides and won’t really tell a lot about the candidate.

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#36

Post by [deleted] »

billsix wrote: post #30
13of40 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a linked list interview question going around back then that went: In constant time, without allocating memory, given a pointer to the first element of a linked list, how can you tell if it eventually ends in a null or if it loops back on itself at any point? I actually ended up implementing the solution while tracking down a hang in a DCOM service I was working on...

In constant time? O(1)?

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#37

Post by JamesBarney »

sxp wrote: post #3

https://blog.usejournal.com/rethinking-how-we-interview-in-m... is the original post by a PM at Microsoft. It doesn't have any useful information about a pure technical interview for software engineering. >(Note: I started at Microsoft when we were still asking questions about why manhole covers were round, how many ping pong balls would fill a 747, and how to reverse a linked list. In 20 years here, I’ve yet to have…

I don't think the 747 problem is very predictive of how well someone can map out a business strategy.

I think a better question might be, "tell me how you've mapped out a business strategy in the past, and what are the strategies you've used to determine how profitable it would be".

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#38

Post by cm2187 »

sxp wrote: post #3

https://blog.usejournal.com/rethinking-how-we-interview-in-m... is the original post by a PM at Microsoft. It doesn't have any useful information about a pure technical interview for software engineering. >(Note: I started at Microsoft when we were still asking questions about why manhole covers were round, how many ping pong balls would fill a 747, and how to reverse a linked list. In 20 years here, I’ve yet to have…

But the real question is whether you can fill a 747 with internal policies and procedures!

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#39

Post by mancerayder »

Great, now can Netflix, Google and Facebook do this, too? Not because I want to work in these places, but because they influence everyone else and as a senior engineer in the systems space I feel I shouldn't need to study days or weeks for fizzbuzz sorting algorithms questions that are designed to test comp sci recent grads. I have a proven career, and was never suddenly stumped in a project due to not being able to.. sort letters in some obscure order based on arbitrary rules. How about we look at that, and compare the candidate's past experience to the current needs and interview based on that -- You DID look at the CV before bringing the candidate in, didn't you?

Re: Microsoft changed how it interviews software developers

#40

Post by lawn »

Matthias247 wrote: post #35
billsix wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In constant time? O(1)?

Isn’t that normally the 2 pointers (tortoise/hare) thing? If yes then I agree it’s not constant time. I personally hate this kind of interview question. It’s one that is easily answerable when one heard the exact question before (in training for interviews). But super hard to answer if not. And it even does not have big applications in practice - in 20years of programming, I never encountered a problem like this. In…

He meant constant memory. It's to invalidate solutions marking items visited.

I too got this question at an interview once, and failed. For fun I asked everyone at work and predictably nobody came close to figuring it out.

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