I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019) • Hacker News Board

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#411

Post by therein » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:05 PM UTC

I think you're being unfair to yourself if you're calling this cheating.

Also FWIW, I interviewed with Microsoft at my college, got asked the very same question as the OP and actually solved it the same way. I knew the formula for the sum and the rest just came to me at that moment.

I was flown to Redmond, given series of interviews and an offer in OSG. Even though it was my dream to work on Windows kernel growing up, in the last 4-5 years, I had become a FOSS Linux guy so I turned down their offer, much to the surprise of the recruiter whom I had shared this was a life-long dream, and took an entirely different direction with my career and life.

Worked out nicely. I am sure I'd be very happy in Microsoft but maybe I am happier.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#412

Post by throwaway09223 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:11 PM UTC

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #392

throwaway09223 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a quiz. There's no questions.

You could call it a free-form interactive essay interview. Pick any subject and converse on it however you like. If it's not going well, pick any other subject.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#413

Post by treis » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

buzzdenver wrote: post #261

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, what CS concepts were you looking for?

Stuff like whether the algorithm will always stop, or whether it runs O(N) vs O(N square). The main point to me was more to be able to have a conversation about the solution rather than it being absolutely right. I remember quite a few people using randomness, the most odd (and totally wrong) one using a random sort function over an array of (1..52).

Why is the random sort wrong?

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#414

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

gcommer wrote: post #306

spywaregorilla wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would have been a huge negative to me. I'm fine to chat with peers and discuss little riddles. That is not what's happening when you're interviewing me for a job position. You're not my peer. We're not having fun. There's a non-subtle implication that my ability to answer the riddle will impact whether or not I get the job. I would be very annoyed if someone asked a puzzle like this too. It's not a novel puzzle. It's…

In every interview I've done, lunch was explicitly bracketed by "this is a free, casual lunch that won't affect your interview at all". And as an interviewer, I've never been asked to report on lunch chats. > You're not my peer. We're not having fun. Actually, most interviewers are your peers, and they typically know that you're under interview stress and are trying to help. If you can't take a break and de-stress du…

> Actually, most interviewers are your peers

Sexual innuendos from peers at the bar are one thing, sexual innuendos from interviewer are another

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#415

Post by spywaregorilla » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

gcommer wrote: post #306

spywaregorilla wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would have been a huge negative to me. I'm fine to chat with peers and discuss little riddles. That is not what's happening when you're interviewing me for a job position. You're not my peer. We're not having fun. There's a non-subtle implication that my ability to answer the riddle will impact whether or not I get the job. I would be very annoyed if someone asked a puzzle like this too. It's not a novel puzzle. It's…

In every interview I've done, lunch was explicitly bracketed by "this is a free, casual lunch that won't affect your interview at all". And as an interviewer, I've never been asked to report on lunch chats. > You're not my peer. We're not having fun. Actually, most interviewers are your peers, and they typically know that you're under interview stress and are trying to help. If you can't take a break and de-stress du…

If you want to destress me during lunch, don't ask me riddles which are strongly associated with interview questions

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#416

Post by peterangular » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:23 PM UTC

mynameisash wrote: post #388

gcommer wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every interview I've done, lunch was explicitly bracketed by "this is a free, casual lunch that won't affect your interview at all". And as an interviewer, I've never been asked to report on lunch chats. > You're not my peer. We're not having fun. Actually, most interviewers are your peers, and they typically know that you're under interview stress and are trying to help. If you can't take a break and de-stress du…

> Actually, most interviewers are your peers Every time I interviewed someone, I ALWAYS asked myself if I would want to work with this person. Not just, can they do the job? Not just, are they technically competent? But, is this someone I would be comfortable going to, asking for help? Are they someone I can build rapport with, brainstorm new approaches and products with? Do they pass the "have a beer together" test?…

> Someone who explicitly has an attitude of, "You're not my peer, we're not having fun" doesn't sound like a good collaborator. Doesn't sound like someone who can be an approachable. Doesn't seem like a good mentor to newer members of the team.

Interviewing is a high stress situation where the person performing the interview ultimately has power. What you're discussing here is how well I can socially fit in - regardless of pressures/stress on my side of the table etc.

It's 100% performative - if I am an interviewee I'm showing you the professional version of myself which is positive attitude and politeness. I'm upholding a social contract.

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> Do they pass the "have a beer together" test?

I'm not here to have beers with you - I'm here to work. And, I think this is pervasive in regards to hiring. This can be incredibly discriminatory and I would appreciate you interview me on the value I can add with my labor vs. "can I have a beer with this guy?" That's weird to me, and as someone who interviews I work hard to not think this way... "Who I like" isn't necessarily who is going to perform in the role - I have to keep my personal preferences out of my professional decisions in my world... and I think that's fair.

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Idk - interviewing is not fun for most people. I defend op's "we're not peers, we're not having fun" perspective both as an interviewer, and interviewee. I think it's a reasonable stance to take as long as they're outwardly presenting as professional and polite as that's what actually matters... not "beers"

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#417

Post by robocat » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

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.

I think you are reading too much into the story.

One reason for the lunch is to try and relax a bit and test “cultural fit”, which is more like a blind date between two people to see if there is any spark. Ideally it is a two way conversation, where the candidate and the interviewers get to judge each other.

There is a problem where cultural fit “tests” are heavily biased against minorities - for example most any sports discussion is dominated by your social class.

Enjoying brain teasers matches a particular type of geek, and the discussion likely veered or was encouraged in that direction by the candidate. It wasn’t Machiavellian, which perhaps you are more responsive to?

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#418

Post by tdumitrescu » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #133

buran77 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of pretty much all the people I know, I can't think of any successful career not pivoting on one such fateful moment of "luck". One lucky question/answer, one fortunate encounter, one near miss. Of course we'll never know how the road not taken looks like. Any moment could actually be a pivotal one but most are very unassuming and only the memorable ones stick with us, making them feel more important. Also, as so…

Gauss solved the same problem in a very similar fashion when he was a kid.

I remember this too, from our 4th-grade "G&T" math teacher telling us the story. Although I use the formula so rarely that I don't keep it memorized, whenever it does come up, I think back to that day in class and that moves the gears enough that I can derive it empirically pretty quickly from small-number examples and the knowledge that it involves two consecutive numbers.

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#419

Post by neilv » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

lrvick wrote: post #134

One time a company I interviewed with asked me obscure algorithm questions about playing card shuffling. As a former professional magician I knew the optimal answers instantly and could jot them down straight away. They had allocated an hour for answers I wrote in a few minutes. I could have told them I had a massively unfair advantage, but I did not bother. They were visibly impressed and told me I was moving on to…

I had a bit similar story, though it went a different way, and prompted a few other thoughts...

Earlier in my career (a few years before Google seemed to start the current techbro rituals), I went to an interview at a big-name CS dept. spinoff company which had the same problem: CS students and professors with no professional software engineering experience deciding what's most important for professional software engineers to know.

The interviewer and I were both senior engineers at well-regarded companies, but he gave me a coding exercise (this was not usual, at the time), and it was a CS101 tree traversal coding exercise in C. I'd happened to remember that day of class from community college, and I just did the exercise. Nothing to brag about.

Then he said "no one ever did it that fast before". So, feeling very confident and a bit disappointed/surprised, I started telling him what I thought was a better way to do interviews for software engineers. (Spoiler: it didn't involve regurgitating CS101 algorithms a person randomly happened to recall.)

I got the offer, and accepted the job, partly because we had a collegial discussion about the interview methods. Very smart and likeable people. But there were a lot of people who arrived from top university departments not knowing how to do software engineering nor even how to do non-homework computer programming, but they apparently passed the interview of the CS undergrads' idea of what's important to software engineering.

(Actually, the person from there who I noticed on LinkedIn many years later as eventually most accomplished from there, was the only one I knew came from a commuter state school, rather than from a big-name CS department. I don't know whether he would've gotten in, once techbro rituals took over. Maybe he would've, if his school's department had switched to teaching to the techbro interview; though, then, maybe that would've been at the cost of whatever skills development later helped him be so successful.)

Re: I cheated on my Microsoft interview (2019)

#420

Post by lrvick » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 7:35 PM UTC

buzzdenver wrote: post #154

lrvick wrote: post #134

One time a company I interviewed with asked me obscure algorithm questions about playing card shuffling. As a former professional magician I knew the optimal answers instantly and could jot them down straight away. They had allocated an hour for answers I wrote in a few minutes. I could have told them I had a massively unfair advantage, but I did not bother. They were visibly impressed and told me I was moving on to…

Can you elaborate on what made the question obscure? I'm asking because I used the question "print out the first 52 numbers in random order"in interviews before, and the answers seemed to give a good hint about understanding of basic CS concepts.

The questions I got were very specific to playing card patterns. The one I remember best was "How many times does it take to perfectly cut and shuffle a deck of cards before it is back in original order". Spoiler: A "perfect" shuffle is called a Faro shuffle and the holy grail of false shuffles to master as a magician. When a deck is cut evenly at 26 cards (doable with practice or a slightly bent or irregular marker card) and Faro shuffled correctly eight times, the deck will return to its original order.

If I really liked the company I might indulge your question, but it would annoy me unless you were a game development company and this was a real problem someone faced recently.

I general I don't like live coding questions because they don't reveal anywhere near the quality of work I produce if left alone to think for a bit. If the questions pertain to a real world problem I will noamally indulge them though. As an interviewer I don't make people do them. I often do live code -review- to see if people can understand code and spot security flaws or bugs as I find that a more useful skill than coding anyway, and code review -is- something actually often done together with peers in the real world.

I sometimes ask for people do take-home tests if they have no open source projects I can reference, because seeing how people code on their own is how I find out if they can do the job. If they use search engines to help, I don't care. That is how real life works.

That said, I only do this if I know the employer is willing to pay them for the time. Work simulation goes both ways.

If I am going to make it like real work, I need to pay for it like real work.