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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

#261

Post by jrflo »

shubhamjain wrote: post #23

As I have grown older, I have realized dead-honesty is a false ideal to live by, especially when it comes to being rewarded in the capitalistic world. I know someone who reached executive level position in a major company and all of his career progress can be traced back to lying on his resume about a NASA internship he never got, which he conveniently purged later from everywhere. I wouldn’t go that far, but I think…

Totally agreed. Capitalism is just a game of competition, and if you want to win the game you should take all advantages that you have. Pretty much everyone else you're competing against will be doing the same.

I know a guy who worked for a prestigious accounting firm and was the dead-honest type. Everyone was inflating their billable hours to clients, except for him. He was 100% truthful on his hours and made sure not to waste any client money, but still got just as much work done as his colleagues who were inflating their hours. Guess who was the first target during layoffs?

If you don't want to play the game that's totally fine, but I wouldn't be surprised if giving yourself a disadvantage didn't hurt in the long run.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#262

Post by gwbas1c »

ventana wrote: post #81

Just don't ask brain teasers when you conduct an interview; I believe they give no valid signal at all, and I also believe Microsoft does not ask them anymore. The coding questions that require an "aha!" moment are very similar to brain teasers, and should also be avoided. When I conducted interviews for FAANG, I asked somewhat simpler coding questions, something around DFS and/or topological sorting (without calling…

> The coding questions that require an "aha!" moment are very similar to brain teasers, and should also be avoided.

Those are usually the first hints I give; mostly because I'm concerned about "everything else" in the coding question.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#263

Post by winternett »

apwheele wrote: post #254

My experience like this was for a data scientist position at Facebook in 2022. So the question was something like, here is a table of predicted probabilities for credit card transactions (hypothetical table, I do not remember the exact quantities), but it looked something like this: Amount, Probability, ActualFraud $5 , 0.2 , 0 $100 , 0.5 , 0 $3 , 0.7 , 1 $1 , 0.9 , 1 And then the question was "what was the threshold…

At one point earlier in my career (during the early 2000s), they flew me to Chicago, picked me up in a limo and gave me a tour of the office... I knew I didn't want to relocate (from the East Coast) and remote work wasn't an option back then, so I had nothing to lose... They asked me the question of "4 lightbulbs in a room down the hallway, with 3 light switches in the room I'm in" to tell which switch belonged to which bulb...

I went in totally unprepared for logical tests, and flubbed the perfect answer partially, but it was funny because I asked the guy if I was "doing an interview to be an electrician or a software developer?".

Since then I've been just fine, and to this day, I've never had to answer that question nor use that type of logic on any job... I reverse engineer & migrate major software apps all the time as a Solutions Architect & Development Director.

I've always found interviews that involve behavioral and cognitive tests to never be good for me as long-term jobs... Now I interview & hire people regularly without asking those types of questions at all because the questions can too easily be studied & rehearsed prior to interviews.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#264

Post by ConceptJunkie »

LanceH wrote: post #206
JSR_FDED wrote: post #101

A friend told me about his AWS interview experience. It was a case study describing a potential client, their needs, limitations, etc - trying to be “realistic”. In the end it came down to either pressuring the client to embark on a complex cloud transition in time for a major sports event (that was a make or break event for the customer) or, as my friend recommended, start with a PoC but do the risky transition afte…

> My takeaway was that interviews are a game with their own rules, and you have to play by those rules But you don't get to know the rules.

And when you break the rules, you get absolutely no feedback. You don't even know if you break the rules, or you were just beat by a candidate the interviewers preferred. I had to go through the process last year and hated almost every microsecond of it, except my interview with the place that actually hired me.

Back in the 90s, looking for a job wasn't so bad. Now it's a nightmare.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#265

Post by tmtvl »

achenet wrote: post #123
makeitdouble wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He didn’t get the job because even though the technical attributes were all good, he should have pressured the customer. I'd say he didn't get the job because they would have asked him to pressure customers day in day out, he would refuse, never get promoted and be otherwise miserable in an aggressive culture. IMHO he shouldn't change his answer to please the interviewer, the process is working as intended and I'd…

Yes, strongly agree with this. The goal when interviewing is not "get the job", it's "am I a good fit for this role". If the company is some weird dysfunctional hierarchy run by socio-paths, I'll be happier elsewhere. Or to put things in a much more pretentious manner - If you're too stupid to appreciate my genius, you don't deserve to work with me :)

Unfortunately most people have a problem with starvation and homelessness, you'd almost swear they're allergic to those things.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#266

Post by viccis »

ventana wrote: post #245
viccis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The coding questions that require an "aha!" moment are very similar to brain teasers, and should also be avoided. The problem with these is that their solutions always seem trivial when you are shown them (or spend time solving yourself) and then mull over them for a while.

I've been doing "daily leetcode" for fun, just to remember how to write code manually without agents, and a few days ago they gave a brain teaser kind of task [1], for which the solution was just [2] (spoiler alert). It took me quite some time to come to that solution, and I'm not really sure I would've found it with all the stress of being on a real interview. [1]: https://leetcode.com/problems/stone-game/ [2]: retu…

Yeah one of the worst offenders of this are the leetcode problems that have a clever but extremely elegantly simple greedy algorithm (such as "return True" lol). Great example is Majority Element [1]

The answer seems pretty clear when you think about it enough, even the proof seems like it makes sense. The problem is marked Easy on Leetcode. But coming up with the algorithm and proving its correctness is a two-name algorithm with its own Wikipedia article. In your example, the challenge isn't even really to "design" that algorithm, it's to prove that it's true.

1: https://leetcode.com/problems/majority-element

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyer%E2%80%93Moore_majority_v...

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#267

Post by CSMastermind »

alexjplant wrote: post #188
makeitdouble wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He didn’t get the job because even though the technical attributes were all good, he should have pressured the customer. I'd say he didn't get the job because they would have asked him to pressure customers day in day out, he would refuse, never get promoted and be otherwise miserable in an aggressive culture. IMHO he shouldn't change his answer to please the interviewer, the process is working as intended and I'd…

I've too many wacky interview stories to list here, but the first time I came to this same conclusion was when I had an interviewer interrupt me mid-answer to correct my pronunciation of "idempotent" (because I said it in what is apparently a more British fashion). I asked him to repeat himself to see if he'd apologize or brush it off as a tic and he repeated himself with an elevated level of contempt. I declined the…

A long time ago, maybe 2016, I interviewed at Paperless Post. The interviewer asked me explain the concept of a promise in javascript, then asked me to implement it from scratch, then asked me to extend it with different features like promise.all.

About 45 minutes into doing this I decided that any company that screened candidate like this was not somewhere I wanted to work so I told the interviewer that I didn't think this was the right fit and I appreciated them taking the time to consider me for the role but I wouldn't be continuing on.

I'll never forget he was like, "But you're doing great!" ... like yes, I know. I'm not stopping because I'm failing, I'm stopping because you are.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#268

Post by cloverich »

LanceH wrote: post #204

My current stumbling block is the "design" interview. I get what they're going for and what I have to practice, but as someone with 25 years of experience I just can't help but have my experience creep into my thoughts. Chief among those thoughts is that we can't design a clearinghouse for a banking system that already has 11 components and the request is just two simple sentences asking for a design. I apparently ha…

Coming from another experienced dev who was frustrated (early) - one tip. Don't over think it. I was tripping up in two system design interviews that ultimately boiled down to them wanting laughably basic answers (one pagination, the other a db transaction). Don't be afraid to deal in basics and then directly ask if they'd like something more detailed, or not. Many places, especially non-elite ones, treat system design as a _very_ basic test of knowing how pieces fit together.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#269

Post by thomastjeffery »

gwbas1c wrote: post #259

Halfway through my career, being on both sides of the table (interviewer and interviewee,) I've observed that a common interviewer mistake is to expect candidates to regurgitate facts; or be able to provide a memorized answer. In this case, the goal is to hire great engineers; and great engineers do not memorize solutions to every problem , nor can they come up intuitively with great solutions in a matter of minutes.

The problem is much bigger than that.

Their goal is to find a "good fit", not to find a good engineer. That's why their software is so incredibly disfunctional: it's just a reflection of their workplace culture.

Re: That time when I failed the Microsoft interview

#270

Post by FartyMcFarter »

pjmlp wrote: post #169
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you expect Leetcode-style problems in the interview and are actually interested in doing your best there, why wouldn't you prepare for that?

That is the thing, I don't expect them, other than for newly graduates without anything else to show their value for.

Even if that's the way it should be, it's not reality.

You can study for the interviews you'd like to have, or the ones you'll actually have.

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