My Experience at Interviews with Microsoft and Google | Hacker News Reader

My Experience at Interviews with Microsoft and Google

nakov.com

26 pointsgreyman13 comments

The author is correct about how disorganized Google's interviews are, as well as how little respect there is for seniority. Whether this is an advantage or a disadvantage is, I think, an open question.

It's tempting to think that because Google is currently very successful, whatever Google does must be correct. But it's the other way around. Google is so successful that it's hard for them to figure out exactly where they're fucking up.

As for the "I'm famous in Bulgaria" bit, that complaint sounds funny to American ears, but it is a real issue. There are people at top Valley firms who grant just about anybody from MIT or Stanford an automatic interview, and leave candidates from Waterloo or ETH on the resume pile. Do you know what the best school in Bulgaria is? Who the top hackers are? I don't.

I am not sure about Bulgaria, but Russians seems to be winning most of the ACM programming contests. (I am not russian, btw) So, there is some real talent over there.

Comming from an ex-comunist country, I can tell you that the schools teach a huge amount of math, physics, and other sciences.

When I came to the US, I thought high-school was embarrasingly easy. I also cruised my freshman year in college, and I started to get really challenged by school only by the second semester of my sophomore year in college.

The other caveat is, that all the good people have left my country, and are working abroad, making pretty good salaries. So, whats left is not necessary the top of the heap.

I am not sure about the situation in Bulgaria, but I bet it is similiar. Saying that you are the "top" engineers of the country, when you know most of the good ones have already left, is not saying much, unless he backs the claims up with real products and feats he has done.

I am not sure about Bulgaria, but Russians seems to be winning most of the ACM programming contests.

I'm an American. As a high school student, I was never interested in programming contests, because I found solving the same problem as everyone else rather boring. I would rather solve a problem that doesn't have an answer.

So I think Russia wins these things because their mentality is different. In America, the really smart people want to do something new. In Russia, the really smart people want to get a high ranking on the programming contests.

I haven't done any real research, though, this is just something I think is true :) One other thing I should mention is that I don't really like losing / failing, so I tend to pick activities that aren't zero-sum. If you don't win the programming contest, you've lost. If you don't solve an interesting unsolved problem the first time, you can try again until you get it right, and nobody will ever know.

From my experience interviewing Software Engineer candidates at Google (most of them for positions at Google Zurich actually)

1. It is not true that you will be hired for a junior position no matter what your previous experience. It is true that you should expect to be hired at a slightly lower position than you would at another company with the same level of experience. On the other hand, promotions are based entirely on merit, not on tenure. I know people who were promoted very high very fast, because they were very good.

2. It is not true that you will only be asked algorithmic questions. It may happen every now and then, depending on the preferences of the people interviewing you, but in general you should also expect design questions, questions about testing, about engineering practices etc.

3. I don't know if Microsoft is better organized and managed than Google. I suspect it is more organized and managed than Google. At Google process is something that is actively avoided by design, and the managers tend to interfere as little as possible. Whether you like it or not depends on your personal preferences. I have friends who came from Microsoft and Yahoo and they like it better at Google, but the sample is obviously biased.

"It is true that you should expect to be hired at a slightly lower position than you would at another company with the same level of experience."

That is not actually true because every company says this. Google is just conforming to an industry norm here (whether you realize it or not). All companies also say "a year here is worth x years anywhere else" and a bunch of other stuff too.

I wanted to stop reading when he talked about how famous he was in Bulgaria, but I finally lost interest in his opinion when he said that Microsoft has better products than Google.

Hope he gets his axe sharpened soon...the grinding noise is really overwhelming.

Yeah, maybe Google has a spelling section in their interviews ;)

But seriously, I think he likes the "rigor" of the Microsoft process. It is very formal. There is lots of documentation, lots of paperwork, and a very long chain of command, etc. And, it appears he wants to "lead" rather than program. There's nothing "wrong" with this, but I think most of us would rather die than deal with all that. That's why most of us would prefer the informality of Google to the formal corporate structure of Microsoft.

Then again, Google might be "too much" for most of us. I work at a company with 4 other people. That is big enough for me.

I agree with the note that MS developers are 'more' organized or professional. Need not mean they are better - I think both Google and MS have extremely talented developers (I work at MS)...just that MS being an older company has matured in the development process. Google will soon be there.

I question that he wanted to be hired at all. He seemed to go to the interviews for self-affirmation. Although the detailed listing of MS interview questions he was asked was interesting.

> Although the detailed listing of MS interview questions he was asked was interesting.

Actually, I thought the questions seemed shockingly easy, compared to the brain-busters I hear about coming out of interviews elsewhere. Pretty much all of them were sort of hand-wave-y open-ended architectural questions, and I would hope the answers would be obvious to anyone with more than a few years of experience.

What I found interesting is that he turned down the offer and the reason he did so.

Bulgaria is technically either the poorest or one of the poorest countries in the EU (GDP per capita is listed at $12,252 in Wikipedia), so anyone from there should be thrilled to take up a well-paid senior position out West working for well-known company such as Microsoft, right? Wrong, apparently.

I think posts like this go to show that the flow of technically skilled people going from the Eastern European countries out West (or even to North America) may be slowing down if not coming to an end altogether just because the salary differential is no longer compelling enough for them to want to move.

Because GDP isn't that useful a measure in this situation. He's not buying things in dollars at US prices, he's buying local goods and services at local prices. He's interested in his purchasing power in whatever economy he happens to be in, so regardless of the dollar amount, he's wealthy in Bulgaria but would be only average in Dublin.

Google seems to be more of a startup mentality. After reading this I'd far rather work for Google.

It's probably like the difference between Microsoft and IBM 10 or 20 years ago.

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