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I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

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Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#391

Post by zerr »

persona_reuse wrote: post #367
klyrs wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If companies told candidates why their applications were denied, sure, I'd be inclined to share my side. They don't, so fuck 'em. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

Previous company, I was a principal IC and I used to interview people. I was warned by HR never to discuss how the interview went or why the candidate bombed. Their notion was: 1) We're there to find candidates, not improve people. 2) Time spent on someone you've eliminated is a loss. Cut your losses. 3) Think like you're talking to the police. Are you 100% sure you're not going to say anything that could be even rem…

Cut your losses by burning the company reputation? Such behavior is nothing but an invitation for a "warm" Glassdoor review.

On the contrary, when I was an interviewer, we had a policy of giving a detailed technical reasoning for the decision within 3 days.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#392

Post by AshamedCaptain »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #158
joeman1000 wrote: post #104

Ok, so how are interviews fair at all then? How do they really tell anything about the person, other than the fact they are good at interviews? How is it fair that all the other people queued up to interview didn’t get a shot because they didn’t do as well in a 5 minute high pressure period? This 5 minutes probably determined the courses of their lives. What the fuck? Does anyone feel as flabbergasted about interview…

Interviews often aren't fair. However, they don't have to be quiz-style. When I conduct interviews I simply have conversations to explore subjects as if I were talking about an issue with a coworker. I tell them directly that my goal as an interviewer is to give them an opportunity to showcase something they know so I can say good things about them. I give the interviewee a choice of subjects and I let them change th…

You are criticizing the "quiz or challenge" style interviews, but you are basically describing a quiz interview. I don't think that most people just expect you to know the answer (like they may in other industries or even government). They expect you to don't know the answer, and then they will try to lead you to it and see your thought process. At least this is my style too.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#393

Post by jimmaswell »

bradlys wrote: post #376
jimmaswell wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we don't live in a meritocracy Nothing is perfect, but we do live in an approximation of a meritocracy, especially in tech. I had no special connections anywhere going into or coming out of college and ended up at my first company "the hard way". Any good references I made were only made through delivering results, I didn't know any interview questions in advance, and my college had no "prestige", certainly no Micr…

Just because you made it in your specific case (however you seem to define this) doesn’t mean we have meritocracy.

Tech is one of the biggest success stories, if not /the/ biggest, of upwardly mobile meritocracy. Anyone with an internet connection can learn what they need on their home computer and probably make it if they have the ability and time.

I hate this idea that everyone who succeeds does so only or even primarily by chance and privilege. Obviously those things will help you, but everyone I know who's tried in life has succeeded in some way, and the people I know who espouse all this "the system is rigged, everything sucks, full communism now" stuff never had any drive or patience to do or learn anything and just want to put in the least effort possible to smoke weed and sit around like a vegetable all day.

I hate how these people try to take my accomplishments away from me. My family was low earning, I had social difficulties in public school, I had no connections or help beyond FAFSA for college. Maybe some people do take the "bootstraps" thing too far but we absolutely live in a world where you can succeed on your own merit.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#394

Post by someweirdperson »

boppo1 wrote: post #326
Isamu wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now I just work hard enough. My review from management actually got much better once I stopped knocking myself out working too hard and instead worked just enough. That was a pivotal moment for me. That and also learning how to manage your manager.

seconding the request on 'Tips for Managing your Manager'.

As long there's a common understanding of the goal of the company it's easy. The tricky part is to get the manager to manage the upstream managers and across departments.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#395

Post by the__alchemist »

cntainer wrote: post #273
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the flip side, we questioned a candidate the usual way with pertinent technical challenges and so on. Then when driving in a van to lunch (our habit was to do a social segment as well as technical) I asked some puzzle questions - add 6 feet to a rope around the world, stretch it out and how far off the ground would it be? and suchlike. He was charmed, we brainstormed some answers and had a fun lunch. Years later,…

add 6 feet to a rope around the world, stretch it out and how far off the ground would it be is this a technical puzzle/question? to me it reads like a middle school geometry question. it would be fun to discuss it with friends/colleagues but I wouldn't expect it during a software engineering interview

I think that's perhaps a naive interpretation. At the core of this question are a number of assumptions, and concepts to think about:

  - What is the rope made of? How stretchy is it? How strong is it to tensile stresses?

  - What model of the earth are we using? A sphere (circular cross-section?) ellipsoid? Which axis of the ellipsoid? Does it take terrain into effect, or just gravitation? How does the rope avoid hitting terrain?

  - How does the rope stay suspended? how does it resist gravity? are there uniform thrusters on it? How are they fueled?

  - How is length added to the rope? Is it stretched somehow? Material added? How is the added material, if applicable, inserted?
Ultimately, I think we need to know what project requirement is driving the question to be able to answer this. It would shed light on most of these assumptions. If it sounds like I'm being pedantic or overthinking the question, I'd disagree: These considerations are critical to giving a meaningful answer; otherwise the question doesn't make sense. Unless we're talking platonic forms or w/e.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#396

Post by abeyer »

Also "cheated" for my campus interview for a Microsoft internship -- there was enough demand and limited slots that they'd set a minimum GPA if you wanted to get a campus interview slot, which I wouldn't have met so didn't even apply.

My friend got one, though, and she was scheduled near the end of the day. Her interviewer mentioned to her that his last slot had cancelled and hie was just killing time until the other interviewer was done and they were heading back to the airport... So she tells him she knows someone and calls me to run across campus to the career center to catch him before they left.

Ended up w/ the internship and my first FTE job out of that.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#397

Post by [deleted] »

nprateem wrote: post #368
hunter-gatherer wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like everyone here is missing OPs point. It seems like they had a mostly typical interview, which the candidate had probably been through a bunch of but for whatever reason wasn't to intrigued by the company. Maybe the candidate thought it was too boilerplate... I don't know. But then during lunch, when a handful of collegues are casually throwing around brain teasers, the candidate realized he would like the…

Ah I see I'm a snowflake for not liking the power imbalance and irrelevance of this sort of thing. TBH I'd just have found it contrived and boring. I wouldn't be excited to have colleagues who couldn't just talk about normal stuff at lunch.

[deleted]

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#398

Post by bradlys »

jimmaswell wrote: post #393
bradlys wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you made it in your specific case (however you seem to define this) doesn’t mean we have meritocracy.

Tech is one of the biggest success stories, if not /the/ biggest, of upwardly mobile meritocracy. Anyone with an internet connection can learn what they need on their home computer and probably make it if they have the ability and time. I hate this idea that everyone who succeeds does so only or even primarily by chance and privilege. Obviously those things will help you, but everyone I know who's tried in life has s…

I come from a worse environment than you and have risen to a higher position. (I was making $1m/yr last year - if you want any kind of token)

I still don’t think tech is a meritocracy and will continue to know that. Do not buy into this delusion.

Just because you made it - meritocracy it does not make.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#399

Post by jimmaswell »

joeman1000 wrote: post #104

Ok, so how are interviews fair at all then? How do they really tell anything about the person, other than the fact they are good at interviews? How is it fair that all the other people queued up to interview didn’t get a shot because they didn’t do as well in a 5 minute high pressure period? This 5 minutes probably determined the courses of their lives. What the fuck? Does anyone feel as flabbergasted about interview…

I'm honestly disappointed that I've never faced an interview with a question like this. I think this kind of test is fun and a good chance to show off liquid thinking skills. I did them for practice for a while in college preparing for the job market but then it just never came up.

Solving a toy problem on the fly in a language you're going to be working in seems totally fair and reasonable to me.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#400

Post by kelnos »

ralfd wrote: post #281
cntainer wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

add 6 feet to a rope around the world, stretch it out and how far off the ground would it be is this a technical puzzle/question? to me it reads like a middle school geometry question. it would be fun to discuss it with friends/colleagues but I wouldn't expect it during a software engineering interview

https://mathimages.swarthmore.edu/index.php/Rope_around_the_... > Although finding the answer requires only basic geometry, even professional mathematicians find the answer strangely counter-intuitive. I guess the more a visual person you are the more counter-intuitive it is. That only 6 feet of rope is needed to widen the radius of Earth at every place at continents and oceans ect at a whole 1 feet seems crazy to me…

Hah, I just did the math on this myself, found the answer to be 0.955 feet, and assumed I had done something wrong, or was off by a factor (or two or three) of ten.

That is unexpected!

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