I was preparing for an engagement, trying to get a better grip on unit testing — something I, admittatdly, need to work harder on integrating in to my workflow — when I found a post on Bob McCune’s blog regarding best practices. The list looks pretty good, can’t really attest to his expertise otherwise, but this is a pretty good roundup!

http://www.bobmccune.com/2006/12/09/unit-testing-best-practices/

Well, I gave it a shot and didn’t make it. The on site with Microsoft didn’t go so great. 4 interviews, two went well, two went poorly — very poorly.

I interviewed with the Windows Live Experience team. It was fun to get to peek in to that group and the things they do and deal with. I spent most of my day (three of the interviews) with individuals in the security group. One of the guys was a tester on the Hotmail spam filter — how cool is that?!

Anyway, point is I’m not a MS employee . They said “try again next year” so I think I’ll do that.

There is, however, good news! I just accepted a position at a company in Portland, OR called Jive Software. I’m very excited to start work there — I start on the 22nd of June. All of the people that I’ve met there have been super nice. The facilities are amazing. The building is right in Downtown Portland! I’ll hopefully get myself a digital camera before I start there, post some photos up on Flickr.

Sine the MS thing fell through, though, I’ve been working for Channelmatter, Inc. It’s been a pretty OK gig, the money is good and the work isn’t too tough…I just need to get in to an office and work with other people and such. Bad. So, I hit the road looking for work and found it in Portland.

If anyone in Portland wants to hang out please just drop me a line whenever!

Well I just heard from my MSFT recruiter today — my phone interview was a success! Nick the phone interviewer, if you’re out there reading this, thanks buddy! Some time in the next 10 days a representative of MSFT will be getting ahold of me to arrange for travel and boarding for my on-site in the next month or so.

Now comes the hard part! I ended up reading most of the book “How would you move Mt. Fuji?”, a kind of expose on MSFT’s interviewing technique. Of course none of these questions or the things I studied ended up applying to the phone interview but, now that I’ve made it through that, I’m definately going to have to apply some of the techniques that I learned!

Also I’ve been reading a “soft copy” of Code Complete — I think the first edition? It will really help me with code quality and things to look out for during the coding portion and whiteboarding portion of the on-site.

I will be looking for some aditional resources — please check back for those of you who want them!

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 . . .

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.

• Microsoft Phone Interview
• Something from the JoS message board?
• Pretty good list of questions that one interviewee was asked.
• Something on the JobsBlog. It’s more of an interview witht he interviewer than it is an interviewee’s experience.
• An interesting account — with code samples!
• Ada Chen’s Search Marketing Specialist interview. This isn’t technical interview like what I’m preparing for but it does give some insight in to what’s going through the interviewer’s head, etc.

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.

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/

Well looks like I’m going to be interviewing for an SDE position (or two? or more?) at MSFT next week.

Well, technically I’m going to be interviewing over the phone to come in and have a day of interviews (*boggle*). I hope I do okay!

The project I’m currently working on with MSFT has been re-instated. We had a few days off while the higher-ups figured out strategy. It was actually kind of nice to get a few days off, but you know…money is money.

I keep resolving that I’m going to use Twitter more often. I’m not sure what Twitter actually is for — it has some potential to be worth while…I think that you have to be someone to really get value out of it though. If you want to find me on Twitter you can at http://twitter.com/bradhe

Here’s a sweet little ditty on variable naming conventions for .NET applications.

http://www.irritatedvowel.com/Programming/Standards.aspx

Woot!

Ed: Damnit, they’re conventions not standards!

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