gregbo (gregbo) wrote,

Microsoft phone screen

Just dropping in to give a few highlights of a Microsoft phone screen
I just had with someone from a storage group. These were specific
questions on C, C++, some Java, and a few other things. As you might
expect, for a number of them, I didn't remember (and said so). For
example, I don't remember what strdup() does; I don't remember the
last time I've used it (or even looked it up in a man page). A lot of
the questions were on C++ which I haven't programmed much in (I don't
list it in the languages section of my resume), which makes me wonder
why I was interviewed for a position that seems to require a fair
amount of C++ knowledge. There were some order-of questions, one
which I didn't remember involving hash tables, but I think I did
better on the ones for binary trees. There were only two networking
questions: what is TCP and describe the difference between a router
and a switch.

At the end of the interview the guy said he enjoyed talking to me,
which surprised me, since I didn't think I did that well. So, we'll
see how it goes. I get the feeling however that this type of job is
more oriented to people who've done a lot of coding as opposed to
design or analysis; the latter two are more in the area of my interest
and expertise. (For example, I don't get the feeling people who
interview for these types of jobs are interested in the protocol
performance discussions that take place on the end2end list, or are
even interested in discussing why PPC advertising can be easily

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