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That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

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Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#71

Post by piskov »

kstenerud wrote: post #66

Ultimately, the problem is that every person has their own anecdata-driven or follow-the-leader-inspired ideas about how to interview effectively, and large swaths of them are in stark opposition to each other. And now after decades of research, we're still using magic potions that mostly don't make sense.

It makes sense alright.

The qualities that are needed to grind the algorithms, system design, and what have you have a nice correlation with success later

Perseverance, diligence, sheer will to grok the somewhat boring shit.

Even writing some code in the notepad/whiteboard means you have enough mental RAM/stack/context window to keep the bits in the head.

—

So it ain’t no “magic potion”. Ideally we had a less strenuous thing ( Bloodborne/Dark Souls platinum trophy for the diligence part? :-) ) but you can’t always have what you want.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#72

Post by stephbook »

modeless wrote: post #65

Once long ago when I interviewed at Apple I was asked the classic "fork in the road, two guys, one always tells the truth and one always lies" riddle, with complete earnestness as far as I could tell. Possibly the single worst interview question I've ever been asked. Of course I told the interviewer I'd heard it before and then gave the correct answer. In my case we just ended up chatting about previous experience in…

Maybe they were judging your perseverance and conduct, not whether you actually finished the work.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#73

Post by argee »

nmfisher wrote: post #63
yellow_lead wrote: post #29

> You have 12 marbles and a balance scale. One of the 12 marbles is inconsistent with the others, meaning it could be heavier or lighter than its peers of normal weight. You are allowed to use the balance scale exactly 3 times to identify which of the 12 marbles is irregular AND determine whether it is heavier or lighter than normal. I also got this riddle, in 2015. I couldn't solve it. Tbh, I think it's a terrible q…

Probably explains why Microsoft hasn't made a good product in...as long as I can remember. It's all shibboleths and gate-keeping.

Back when I interviewed at MS as a college senior, I had no clue about these "formats". So when someone asked me how I would make (I think they meant design) a web crawler, I started writing one in Python. They didn’t stop me, and it seemed to be awkward to them that I was doing this, whereas I felt awkward that they were acting that way when I was doing what they asked. It was just stupid all around. These systems deserve to be gamed, and the interviewers can't handle anything else, like in TFA.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#74

Post by dmurray »

In these circumstances I always say "I've seen something similar before". That has the benefits firstly, that the interviewer will probably go ahead with the question anyway while still noting your honesty; and secondly, that it's usually true - it's possible this problem is subtly but importantly different from the one I'm pattern matching against. There are half a dozen versions of this ball problem.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#75

Post by stephbook »

gofreddygo wrote: post #27
buildbot wrote: post #16

Counterpoint to many responses here - when I have interviewed people, it’s a really positive signal if the candidate says they have already seen a problem- the we can move onto something more interesting! Not solving does not mean failure either. As a candidate myself I always mention if I have seen similar problems, such as finding primes - real example, and I was hired on that loop at Microsoft! On the other hand,…

I'd preface the solution and the key point before mentioning that I'd seen this problem before and then further ask if they still want me to code up the solution. This eliminates the case that I, the interviewee might be bluffing. Also they might just be interested to know if you can think on your feet by then adding a twist later. who knows not my call. It would be dumb if the next one they throw at me is one i've a…

The interviewer might also just be a cog in the machine and know how it works.

"Just solve it and I'll note down an A+" is sometimes better than "candidate was honest, but didn't finish the alternative riddle."

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#76

Post by npodbielski »

kstenerud wrote: post #66

Ultimately, the problem is that every person has their own anecdata-driven or follow-the-leader-inspired ideas about how to interview effectively, and large swaths of them are in stark opposition to each other. And now after decades of research, we're still using magic potions that mostly don't make sense.

Yes, the best way to land yourself a good gig is to have a friend in the company already and will put a good word.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#77

Post by cronin101 »

My favourite interview question that I received was when I was asked to write code that would serialize/deserialize a binary tree and was told it was fine to use "any programming language".

They received a crash course in the power of Haskell ADT and `deriving (Show, Read)`.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#78

Post by [deleted] »

Swizec wrote: post #36
yellow_lead wrote: post #29

> You have 12 marbles and a balance scale. One of the 12 marbles is inconsistent with the others, meaning it could be heavier or lighter than its peers of normal weight. You are allowed to use the balance scale exactly 3 times to identify which of the 12 marbles is irregular AND determine whether it is heavier or lighter than normal. I also got this riddle, in 2015. I couldn't solve it. Tbh, I think it's a terrible q…

> I also got this riddle, in 2015. I couldn't solve it. Tbh, I think it's a terrible question. There isn't really a step-by-step problem solving process, but you just need to have a "leap" to realize you can weight the marbles in groups of 3. It’s an information theory question similar to the “how far can you drop the egg before it breaks” puzzle. You don’t need a leap of intuition, just remember the right theorems a…

[deleted]

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#79

Post by keeda »

> Microsoft, of all places, might sound like a weird company to target in 2026.

Heh, Microsoft might actually have been weird to target in 2015, especially in SV / startup circles, given that pg had declared it dead in 2007 (https://paulgraham.com/microsoft.html) I guess the Netherlands didn't get that particular memo.

In 2026 Microsoft might actually be interesting again, given it's up there in the Mag 7 jockeying for position in the AI race. I know it's gonna be impossible to get an accurate vibe-check on HN, but I wonder what younger folks think of it today...

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#80

Post by danielbarla »

yellow_lead wrote: post #29

> You have 12 marbles and a balance scale. One of the 12 marbles is inconsistent with the others, meaning it could be heavier or lighter than its peers of normal weight. You are allowed to use the balance scale exactly 3 times to identify which of the 12 marbles is irregular AND determine whether it is heavier or lighter than normal. I also got this riddle, in 2015. I couldn't solve it. Tbh, I think it's a terrible q…

> Tbh, I think it's a terrible question.

I think it's a terrible _interview_ question, partly due to it's "IQ test" nature, but mostly because it's a pretty hard problem and I really wouldn't expect someone to be able to just spew out a solution the first time they hear it.

Of course, the process would be more about the interviewer observing your thought process, seeing how you develop a notation for solving this thing which you almost certainly don't have any pre-existing notation for, etc. I just really wouldn't expect much progress in the space of 5 to 10 minutes, although I am basing this on the "13 marbles" version of the problem.

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