It was a tiring trip to Dubai for the Microsoft Interviews. This post is dedicated to my interview (and Dubai) experience.

Staring on a Wrong Note

I left from home at 2pm on 8^th of March. After reaching the airport, the airport authorities told me that I needed to get the immigration check done. There was another person -Chaitanya Prakash from Bangalore who was also going for the interview. He also had the same issue (immigration). We rushed to the immigration office and realized that nothing could be done that day as the office was already closed. Wondering if we will ever be able to attend the interview, I called up Priya (my recruiter) but she was busy taking interviews. I left a voice message for her. Then I called up Emirates (the airlines that we were supposed to fly on) and got the tickets rescheduled for the next morning (9^th March) 9:45 AM. I offered Chaitanya to stay at my place to which he reluctantly agreed. Actually, thanks to bollywood, Chaitanya had a very wrong picture of Mumbai in his mind (it was his first visit to Mumbai) and it was a pleasant surprise for him. In the night, I spoke to priya and got the interviews rescheduled.

The next day, we went to the immigration office and realized that the process will take about 4-5 hrs. We had to reschedule the tickets once again. Once the immigration check was done, we rushed back home to take our luggage and again back to the airport. It was a painful day. About 120 Km of riding in less than 4 hrs, standing in a queue for about 2 hrs, in short – pathetic.

 

Stunning Dubai

The flight was late by approximately 30 minutes. We flew at 7:30 from Mumbai and reached Dubai by 9:15 Dubai Local Time. Apart from (long) announcements in Arabic (I started thinking of a personalized announcement system!), it was a pleasant flight.

Dubai is a great city. With people coming from all over the world, Dubai has become a global city. With a grand (and beautiful) airport, Dubai welcomes you to a great new world of architecture. If I were t describe Dubai, I would call it an architecture city. Wide, clear roads, tall buildings, fast moving traffic… these are certain things that attract visitors (especially if you come from Mumbai ).

We reached our hotel at about 11 in the night and had a nice sleep (of course after having our dinner!)

 

The Interviews

We reached the interview location a little ahead of time. Priya asked us to roam around and have a look at the beautiful beach (I must thank you for this, Priya!). In a short while, some people from Pakistan joined us. In total, there were eight people to be interviewed – three from India and five from Pakistan. Priya briefed us all about how the interviews were going to happen and explained the entire process to us.

There were only six interviewers, so two people had to wait in a round robin fashion while other six were being interviewed.

According to the normal schedule, we were to have three interviews, but some of us (including me) had four interviews. The interview round details follow

Round 1:

It was with Manish, Testing Manager with MPG. Manish was a calm man. He started with some lightweight technical questions and quickly moved on to some interesting ones. I fumbled a bit on the problem that he asked me to solve. Although I got a solution to the problem, it was neither complete nor efficient. After a few more questions, we finished and he asked me if he had any questions.

I asked him about some more details on MPG and his role in the group. In addition, I asked him about how an SDET spends his life and how an SDET is different from an SDE.

 

Round 2:

This time it was Luke (sorry Luke if I misspell your name) – Release manger with the Windows OneCare Live Team. Luke is an interesting person. Full of energy. I enjoyed this interview the most. He asked me to design a state machine. I was not sure if I remembered the conventions of state machines so I asked him about it. Then I started to design the machine. In a couple of minutes, I was ready with a basic design. He then asked me to break the machine (find vulnerability). Then he asked me to fix it. We had an interesting sequence of break it – fix it thing. While the break-fix thing was on, he gradually increased the complexity of the problem by introducing new dimensions to it. I guess I did well with the increasing complexity!

We were running short of time. Nevertheless, in the end, he asked me if I had any questions for him. I started with the standard questions – which team do you work for and as what? Asked his responsibilities and roles and how he coordinates with the PM, SDE and SDET. I told him that I was using OneCare and really appreciated it. He then asked me what it would be if I had to improve one thing in OneCare. I gave him a handful of suggestions (although there was only one that could be considered as a GOOD feature)

 

Round 3:

Round 3 was with Sangeeta – Test Lead with the MPG. We started with tech stuff right away and she threw upon me a linked-list question. I came up with a solution in a couple of minutes. However, the solution was not so efficient. We discussed another alternative way to crack it. Later, she asked me an interesting problem about devising a traffic signal algorithm. I again came up with a basic solution. I then asked her if there was a standard solution to it. She said there was no standard solution and it could be solved in multiple ways. She told me that I could have considered peak hours etc for writing an intelligent solution. With a few more questions, we were done.

As usual, I asked Sangeeta about her roles and responsibilities. How is a typical day as an SDET and how is it different from SDE.

 

When I finished with 3 rounds, I thought I was done for the day (although not very satisfied with my performance), but then I came to know that there were people undergoing 4^th round. In about 5 more minutes, Priya came out and told me that I had another round with Murali, Product Unit Manager, MPG - Subscription And Commerce Group.

Round 4:

Murali was an interesting person. He asked me which was the most interesting question I had that day. And without any doubt in my mind, I said it was the one with Luke. I enjoyed the idea of having a single problem and dissecting it to the maximum extent. He asked me a scenario based question – asked me to devise a quality assurance plan for an umbrella manufacturing company. It took me about 4-5 minutes to come up with it. I had never thought so much about an umbrella before! Anyways, I discussed my plan with Murali and he seemed satisfied with it (I am probably not the best expression reader… so, I am not sure if he really was). He then gave me a coding question - an extrapolated version of a simple problem I had already heard of (but never attempted). I came up with a simple solution which was complete but not efficient - with a complexity of O(n²). I again went through the problem and came up with a good solution which was O(n) and solved the problem pretty neatly.

Until this round, I was not asked to write code. Murali asked me specifically to write the code for my solution. I wrote the code (on paper, not in visual studio) in C#. We had some discussion about array sizing and memory usage. I insisted on using an ArrayList instead of using a fixed sized array of worst-case size (which would waste a lot of memory).

Anyways, once I was done with coding the solution, he asked me if I had any questions for him. I asked him about his role as a product unit manager, and how he interacted with the SDE and SDET and the PM.

 

 

That was it! I was done for the day (in about 4 hrs). we went out of the interview location and spent some time talking to each other. Myself and Chaitanya were getting late as we had to catch a flight. So we waved goodbye to others and were on the way back to India.

 

 

I apologize for not posting the interview questions. I will probably do that after I consult with priya about which one to post and which one not to post.

 

I am leaving for Dubai today for my interview. Do not have much time to post a long entry (as I usually do!). Have to pack my stuff and get going in a few hours.

People, Pray for me!

 

By the way, k10jobs is rocking. With very little work remaining (some part of the advertisement platform), the marketing team is on its toes now.

There is news about my interview - the interview dates are 8th, 9t, and 10th of March 2006. They will schedule the interview on one of those dates. Plus, unlike other companies, MS is going to pay all my (genuine) expenses - air travel, taxi fair, food, hotel stay (if required) etc. Exact dates of when I will be leaving will be available in a few days.

In the previous post, I wrote about my experience with the telephonic interview. Now that I am thru, I am now preparing heavily, I am trying to find a lot of (considerably) difficult computing problems and solve them. In the process, I have found some really interesting sites. I would want to share them with you.

 

I have some news for all those Microsoft devotees. Not sure if you are aware, the new version of Internet Explorer (IE 7) is in the pipeline. Some selective users (developers to be true) were offered to preview the beta 1 edition of IE 7.
Now, the beta 2 of IE 7 is out. Moreover, as with beta 2 of any MS product, IE 7 is now available for evaluation to general users.
To download IE 7 beta 2, check out this link .

Additionally, you would want to look at this cool video  about IE 7.


IE 7 comes with a host of new features on security, tabbed browsing (a feature long awaited ), enhanced ergonomic design, and lot more. Look for yourself to find out more.

However, be warned that, IE 7 is still in beta stages and should not be used in high reliability scenarios or production environments. Nevertheless, largely, you can enjoy the all-new experience.

 

If you are graduating this year, or have graduated within past 1 year and want to shape the future of the technology world, here is the chance of your lifetime.

Microsoft is hiring for its Redmond facility .

In brief, MS requires candidate for following positions:

Software Design Engineer (SDE):
Skill Set: C/C++/C#; problem solving; creativity; passion for technology.
Responsibilities: Constructing data structures and algorithms; writing code; testing and debugging code; prioritizing feature list; varying degrees of Program Management activities

Software Design Engineer in Test (SDET):
Skill Set: C/C++/C#; problem solving; methodical; likes to break problems down; customer focus; creativity.
Responsibilities: Evaluating User Assistance documentation; writing creative code to test the product; writing automation programs, standalone programs, and device drivers; reporting and prioritizing bugs; stress testing

Both positions require you to be having a BS/BE/B Tech (you could be a final year student).

To find out more about the jobs, and the procedure for applying to these jobs, you can look here .

If you know of anyone that might be interested, or a bulletin board where it would be appropriate to post this, please pass this message along.  There are multiple positions open and candidates will be in competition with themselves, not each other.

What is a qualified candidate?
* Someone who has (or will be completing this year) a bachelor’s (four year or more) degree in Computer Science or a related field.

* Someone that has very strong abilities to write code in C/C++

* Someone that is very driven and passionate about technology, desiring to make software products that will go all over the world

* Someone with fluent English speaking skills

All the best folks.