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!
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.
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.
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
