Archive for Uncategorized
February 9, 2009 at 7:43 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
Well I got off the phone with my interviewer about an hour ago. I’ve been winding down since, had a conference call. The interview went really really well! The guy I talked to, an SDE2 in UC, was really cool! We talked a lot about what he does and his career “track” at MS. We discussed the SDE career path as well as the PM and SDET career path. I’m pretty sold on SDE at this point 
.
The interview itself was less of an interview and more of a conversation. I was asked things about my experience and the hardest technical challenge I had to overcome. I wasn’t asked any of the famous logic problems, only one coding problem. I was pretty nervous for this because I didn’t know how to study for it but it turned out to be pretty easy! The problem was, given a string, supply the frequency of charaters in the string.
Hopefully I’ll hear back soon . . .
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February 8, 2009 at 9:56 pm
· Filed under Interview, Microsoft, Uncategorized ·Tagged Advice, Microsoft, Phone Interview
I’m certainly not the first guy to write about interviewing with Microsoft but I will share some of the things I’ve used to prepare for my interview sequence. Microsoft recruiters will conduct a phone interview first and if you make the cut they’ll invite you up to do an in-person interview. For Software Development Engineer (SDE), Software Development Engineer in Test (SDE/T — pronounced “ess-det”), and Program Manager (PM) positions the interviews are very technical. Microsoft has gotten kind of legendary for their interviewing processes and techniques. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on Microsoft’s interviewing processes and techniques.
Below I’ve just listed the resources I’ve used to prepare for my phone interview.
- The Microsoft Interview by Jason Looney. Has a pretty good rundown of logic questions that look legit — could certainly see these appearing in the future.
- Interview Questions on Wikipedia’s article. These are more technical questions. For instance, “How would you test a pen?”
- Microsoft’s JobsBlog has a TON of info on specific components of the interview. It’s maintained by their recruiters and HR folks — the same people that will be interviewing you – so you know the info on there is legit!
- Just a list of interview questions… Seems like some more legit info that you should know.
I also found it useful to read other people’s experiences with phone interviews. Some are successful, some are not.
The important tips/points I’ve learned so far are listed below. I’ve kind of scraped these from other pages.
- Try to walk around during your phone call. It will keep you alert.
- Prepare ahead of time. Make a list of common questions and your answers. Look at the links about for common questions.
- Sound like you’re really in to it! I mean come on, it’s Microsoft. Passion about technology is #1!
- Prepare some questions for the end. I hear that they ask if you have any questions at the end of the interview. It would be a good idea to have some prepared! Come on, I’m sure you’ve got some…it’s just a matter of harvesting them.
- Answer questions honestly. They’re not interested in buying a personality they’re interested in buying your skills.
- Be concise.
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February 6, 2009 at 10:40 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
I will be interviewing at 9:45 AM on Monday, Feb. 9th! This is really exciting. The confirmation email I received from the recruiter said that this was going to be a “very technical interview.” I will be expected to write code as I go! I think that’s a pretty cool idea.
I’ve got a lot of studying to do — for this and for school. I’ll post up some of the resources I find useful as I go. To get started one of the best that I found was actually the JobsBlog by MSFT’s HR guys! It’s really full of useful info. You can find it at http://microsoftjobsblog.com/
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February 6, 2009 at 8:07 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
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January 16, 2009 at 10:16 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
Wow, here’s a pretty good rundown of how the ASP.NET custom controls subsystem works. Definitely good info regarding control lifetime!
Cheers.
http://rahulgoud.blogspot.com/2007/12/life-and-times-of-server-control.html
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December 5, 2008 at 6:51 am
· Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged Linux, Tips
Found this today.
make 2> ~/make.txt
This will capture the stderr of a command! I didn’t know about these before tonight.
You can find more redirection variations at http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/io-redirection.html
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December 1, 2008 at 3:11 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
I’ve ran in to many scenarios where I need to regenerate the code behind for an ASPX or ASCX file. For instance, if you copy the markup from one ASPX page to another ASPX page Visual Studio won’t automatically generate the code behind for any controls that you might have in the markup block you copied. You can force Visual Studio to regenerate code behind but the methods I’ve found are a little kludgy. The one I list here is the only one I’ve tried, perhaps I’ll update this if/when I run into this situation again.
Empty *.designer.cs
The first method I found was to open your *.designer.cs file in notepad and delete the contents. Then go back into Visual Studio and edit your associated markup file. Add some control (i.e. a button) via the markup, then switch to “Design” view and delete the control you just added. This will force Visual Studio to regenerate the *.designer.cs file.
Note that you should probably save the contents of your *.designer.cs file somewhere before you save in notepad!
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