Yipeee ..... I passed my first interview with microsoft and they asked me to come to Redmond for a second one. So i arranged my travel with them .. was really easy to take care of it.
I decided to go on Saturday, which gave me extra days to spend in Seattle and also gave me Sunday to prepare for the interview. Fortunately the Russian was able to company me there, thanks to him begging his dad for a plane ticket using some of the frequent-flyer miles he has collected. So it was a nice time - spending a little holiday in Seattle, everything for free including plane tickets, hotel for 3 days and car rental.
My car rental
When we got there, we traveled through seattle, downtown, the space needle, the international park ... and ended the day in pike's public market - a really exotic international place. I liked this fish market soo badly, because it reminded me of my hometown. They sold lots of fresh fish, and the way they sold them was really interesting: everyone was singing and they threw fish from one person to other like the bartenders from the Coyote Ugly movie. The other cute thing I saw there were lots of flowers shops (I love flowers). The prices were not too expensive, and they were really cute ... not only roses, but lilies, daisies, sunflowers, etc., making the market so colorful and lovely.
However I didn't like Seattle too much, I prefer San Fransisco still.
We spent all of saturday downtown. The next day, we went around Redmond, nothing much there, just looking around the surrounding area. We ended up eating in an Indian restaurant, and the Nan (bread) was sooo goood, the best Nan I've ever had. I love food if you don't know me well, but I am a bit picky , not like the Russian who can eat everything .... We chatted with the waiter and asked him regarding the living costs in seattle (I like to know how much $$$ I have to ask for, before the interview...)
After our lunch, we went back to hotel and practiced lots of programming problems, just to make sure that I know how to solve them and to explain it clearly. The problem with technical questions is that sometimes you are too nervous and forget everything or maybe you want to solve it right away without thinking through all the possibilities. I read from the internet that Microsoft likes the interviewee to explain or give the algorithm before writing code. So I practiced that a lot, and during my practice, Russian noticed that I always said "everyting like that" and made lots of assumptions without explaining them. Phew - good thing he noticed and let me know before my interview.
Monday, Russian dropped me off at Building 19 (the hiring building), and I walked inside (btw, we went a day before to check out the building and took some pictures hehehheheh).
I was nervous, really nervous, and the lady at the front desk asked my name and gave me a nametag and asked me to wait until my hiring HR lady (Marie) came to pick me up. So I waited around 15 minutes until she came out, and she took me to her office and gave me some questions regarding my status and starting date .... she also gave me tips how to "divide and conquer" each question ... really nice tips. She also asked me this as a warm-up:
"Imagine you are a librarian in the Microsoft Library, and
Bill Gates calls you one day and asks if he can borrow
a book, and you check the database to see that the book
is available. So you tell Bill Gates to come to pick it up,
but after you hang up, you realize that the book is not on
the shelf. What do you do?"
She wanted to know how I will divide and conquer the problem, and then she explained what mistakes I made. After finishing with her, she took me to the interview car, a honda car, really small one, and this car drives all the interviewees around every day.
I jumped into the car, and had a bit of conversations with the driver. He said that every day there are 100 people interviewing with Microsoft .... ooooo my God ..... to make the story short, I had 6 interviews, only 1 lunch break..... Microsoft's cafeteria is way better than GT's, and they have 13 different cafeterias!
I was so exhausted after the interviews. I skipped the dinner with Microsoft because I had to go back to Atlanta since my flight departed at 10 pm, and the interview was finished at 7 - no time for dinner. But I ate a realy expensive dinner at the Seattle airport with the Russian (and Microsoft paid for us).
November 27, 2005
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