Microsoft Interview - Live Search

After reading about Ben's interview at Microsoft, I thought I would post my own. Perhaps I'll post my interviews at Google, Yahoo, and Amazon later.

Where to begin? Let me start by saying I'm not a Microsoft fanboy. I don't have anything against them and use Windows on my home desktop and Office at work, but that's about it. I spend most of my time in Cygwin: a linux environment for Windows. In addition, I use Emacs and Eclipse. I have programmed professionally for 8 years, 7 1/2 of those years have been exclusively in a Linux or Unix environment. My primary languages have been C++, Perl and more recently Java. For a while, I ran Ubuntu on my desktop, but the kids and wife didn't like that so much :) Nevertheless, I think you can see that I am by no means a Microsoft fanboy.

I first applied for a position at Microsoft in 2003 in their Visual Studio group. I had recently completed my Ph.D. at Clemson and thought I was God's gift to programmers. I won't go into that interview at this time, since this entry is focusing on my latest interview, but I will say I bombed badly. For one thing, I ate something that disagreed with me and spent more time in the bathroom than in the interviewer's offices. Secondly, I was interviewing for both a PM role and an SDE role and so I kept having to switch modes. Thirdly, I was bull headed and wouldn't listen to any of the interviewers. I just sucked. They said I could apply again in a year, but I didn't. I figured they had a big red X on my submission folder.

Most of my professional career has been spent at Acxiom, a global interactive marketing services firm. Primarily, I study and implement ideas around matching and record linkage. Over the last two years, we've been bringing machine learning and information retrieval research to bear on the record linkage problem and it has been very exciting. I wanted to spend more time working on those large scale problems. Therefore, I submitted my resume to a few of the larger companies: Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and Microsoft. I got callbacks from the first three. Microsoft still had that big ole X on my folder.

My Google interview was first. I'll describe it in another post, but I bombed it. I didn't study and they didn't give hints. They were a great group of people, but it just wasn't my day.

Next up was the Yahoo! interview. I thought I had bombed it as well, but apparently not. I got an offer to work with the Pig team. However, by this time I also had an interview with Amazon upcoming, so I requested that they wait for my decision until after that interview. On a side note, I think the Pig team is great and I wish them all the best in the future.

Needless to say, I was very excited after receiving the Yahoo! offer. Perhaps I wasn't an idiot after all (I had begun to wonder after the Google interview - and my wife was making fun of me!). The first thing I did was announce it on twitter. The funny thing is, Gretchen, of JobsBlog fame, follows me on twitter. Her response? "Congratulations! Sounds like we'll have to do something about that." (Note: Since twitter is public, I don't have a problem reposting her words here). By the end of the day, I had three Microsoft teams contacting me. Among those teams was the Live Search team. Since I was interested in machine learning and information retrieval, I requested that team be the one I interview for.

I wasn't too worried on the day of the phone screening. After all, I had passed two phone screens for each of the three other companies; how hard could this one be? Turns out, it could be pretty hard. The screener started out by asking if I primarily used live search. My response, "No, I prefer Google." Once it escaped my mouth I immediately knew I bombed. How could I interview for a product that I didn't even use! She then asked if I had ever used Live Search, to which I responded positively. I told her I didn't see much difference in the results, which was true. She then moved on to the "coding" question. I won't go into the question, but I will say I didn't do too well on it. I started out trying to use a dynamic programming algorithm. She quickly informed me that the problem could be solved in linear time. Ouch! We worked on the program for quite some time. I got down the right path, but needed quite a bit of help. She then took questions from me and the interview was over. I knew I wouldn't be moving to the second round. I even sent out a few text messages saying "When interviewing with Microsoft, the answer to 'Do you use live search?' is not 'No, I prefer Google'".

A few days later I was driving my family to a local water park when I got the call from Microsoft. They wanted to fly me out! Wow! Apparently it is OK to use Google after all! I certainly didn't expect that. I was already going to be in the Seattle area for my interview with Amazon, so I asked if they could schedule their interview at the same time. It required some fast moving on their part as my interview with Amazon was only a week away. However, they responded brilliantly and set up my accommodations and new return flight. The only thing left for me to do was choose which teams inside of live search I would prefer to interview with. They gave me a list of teams and their descriptions and I ranked them.

At this point, I'll skip over the Amazon interview and move forward in time to the day before the Microsoft interview. Amazon does not provide a rental car, but instead reimburses you for taxis. Therefore, I had to take a Taxi back to the airport and then get the rental car from Microsoft. From there, I drove to Redmond and found my hotel. It was in the Redmond Town Center, which provided a great venue for eating and shopping. I got there in the afternoon and I found greek diner in the town center. After lunch I went back to my hotel and watched some Ars Digita University algorithms classes. In addition, I had also spent some time reading the CLRS Algorithms book. Those two things, coupled with an online MIT course on algorithms would be my primary study guide. Unlike Ben, I didn't work too many problems out on my own, just geeked out over videos :) On a side note, the hotel that Amazon provided didn't have free in-room internet, so it was nice to be in a hotel that did.

At this point, my worst nightmare happened. My stomach began to churn and I started spending more time in the bathroom than out. Why did this keep happening to me? Was it nerves or do I REALLY not like Seattle food? I tried a couple of times to wander around the Redmond Town Center, but each time I kept having to run (literally) back to my hotel room. If this didn't pass by the next day, I was going to just die.

Luckily it went away. I ended up eating something light for supper instead of all the greek and italian food I'd been eating. That seemed to help. By the morning, I was going to the bathroom at a much slower pace, so maybe I'd be ok.

I left very early in order to get to Building 19 on time. I didn't map out the route the day before, so I wanted to be sure I could find it. I'm glad I did leave early because the signs to it aren't overly visible and I looped the Microsoft campus a few times before finding the right building.

The receptionist inside the Lobby of Bldg 19 took my name. I commented on her ear thingies. She had things in her earlobes like they have in Africa. I asked her what they were called and she said, "Gauges." I told her I was from Arkansas and we don't see too many things like that, but I thought they were cool. She thanked me and pointed to the waiting area. Yes, right, don't flirt with the receptionist...go sit down.

The waiting area came complete with an XBox 360 and a copy of Guitar Hero, which another candidate was playing. Well, at least I thought it was a candidate. I have to admit, she was really tearing up Guitar Hero - definitely a pro! After her turn ended, she looked back over at the receptionist and said, "Ok, your turn!". It turns out she was the OTHER receptionist. They swapped places and Gauge Girl began playing Guitar Hero (well, she offered it to me first, but I politely refused). Sadly, I began wondering if that was a test. Maybe they only hired people that played Guitar Hero when given the chance? (yeah, I'm sad like that)

After a bit of waiting, my recruiter came in. He took me back to his office and we began to talk about Microsoft. He gave me a great spiel about the company; he was a good salesman. We ended up talking longer than we should have and I had to hurry to get to a bus. Unfortunately, all the buses were gone and we had to wait for one to come back. It made me late to my first appointment :( He said not to worry, he would call over and tell them I was going to be late. Furthermore, like Ben, I was give a schedule that only went until 2:00. If I didn't perform, I'd be done then.

My first interview went ok. I never do great in the mornings, but I answered his questions satisfactorily. I forgot one simple case which finally came to me, but other than that, I did fine. I mentioned this failing to the next interviewer who said not to worry about it. The next interview was more challenging, I had read a bit about what he was asking, so I had some background, which I explained to him. However, I only had the broad theory, not the intricate details, so we proceeded to hammer out the details over the board. It was actually a lot of fun because I knew certain things to be true, but didn't know why. We discovered why together over the board. It caused a lot of "Aha!" moments. The only downside is that I missed a key part that caused my runtime to explode. I figured this out as he was chatting with the next interviewer and when they returned I mentioned the optimization to him. He nodded his agreement and passed me off.

At this point, it was lunchtime. My interviewer took me to the cafeteria. I got Chinese food because I thought I could eat the rice without it upsetting my stomach. We talked over lunch and I didn't eat much. We mainly discussed coding styles, agile methods, etc... Turns out he was interested in a book club I had started with my current company because he was running one for his team.

After lunch, we returned to his office for some interface design. I teach a UML class at The University of Arkansas at Little Rock so I sketched out my interface and design in UML. We went into detail around some of the decisions, like whether to use a visitor pattern and factory pattern. I think I did ok, but it is hard to design an interface without seeing use cases for it first. I mentioned this toward the end and he agreed. At the end of this interview it was 2:00...and...he took me to the next interview!

During this interview I was back to coding. Actually, I never got around to coding too much as I spent most of my time determining the algorithm. This is a big difference from my first Microsoft interview as I would have gone straight to the code. In this interview, I stepped back, looked at a number of examples and came up with the right solution first. I coded it pretty quickly, but no major mistakes. He showed me some of the cool things his team had been working on. I was really impressed! Then, he took me to the next interviewer. This interviewer focused me on a "real world" problem. In other words, this problem was one that they had seen and solved in the past. It took me about half the interview, but I came up with the solution. He seemed impressed and said that not many of their interviewers come up with that solution and it is the one that they actually used in production. I was pretty pleased with myself at that point. We spent the rest of the time talking about their projects, team structure, etc... It turns out that both teams I interviewed with spend a lot of time working with Microsoft Research, which is really cool for an academic like me :)

That was the last interview before the "big boss", who took me to get a drink and a snack. I was hungry since I didn't eat much lunch, so I took him up on a granola bar and a bottle of water. He spent a lot of time telling me about Microsoft and asking me about my previous experience and the work I did with my current company. I told him what I could without violating any NDAs. He seemed pleased with what I told him and I was very impressed with what he was saying about the future of the team. He described a lot of their internal systems and frameworks, all of which excited me. Like the recruiter, he was a great salesman. That must be a Microsoft thing :)

After our discussion, he said that I should meet the other team's "big boss" (my words, not his). He left me in the lobby of his building and went to hunt the other one down. Turns out the other "big boss" had just gotten done playing softball with the interns and needed to clean up, but offered to take me to dinner. I graciously accepted and sat down to wait as he got ready. I went to eat with him and one of his team leads (who I had interviewed with previously) at an Italian restaurant in the Redmond Town Center. We talked about Microsoft, the Yahoo deal, Google, our mutual desire to WIN, etc... He was also a great salesman.

I was pretty pumped after leaving there that night and couldn't sleep a bit on my red-eye flight back home. I called my wife and told her that I was pretty sure we'd have an offer from Microsoft to consider. Turns out we would also have an offer from Amazon.

I won't go too much into my decision making process other than to say that I did not like the Silicon Valley area. It just felt dirty to me. I was much more at home in Seattle. I liked the contemporary vibe and the fact that there were actual trees. Lots of trees. Yeah, I know it rains, but I don't like the sun much, anyway :) Therefore, though the Yahoo! job was very attractive, I just could not accept it. My decision was between Amazon and Microsoft.

At one point, I thought I wasn't going to accept any of the offers. We are settled, the kids are in school, we own our home, and life isn't too bad. However, I think the ability to work with some amazingly smart people and have Microsoft on the resume is too good to pass up. It is not often that you get to work with internet scale data. My work at Acxiom is on billions of records, but nothing like what you see when you consider search. The playing field is very, very different and you have to think WAY outside the box, which I love to do. Moreover, I think it would benefit our kids to be in an environment like Seattle. There's a lot to see and do there and there are many more opportunities there than there are here in Arkansas. Finally, the school systems there are very good and I think the kids will benefit greatly from that.

I start on August 25th and I am very excited. I'll be sad to leave a great team behind, but I know they wish me the best as well. Now, I'm looking forward to starting the next phase of my life as a member of the Live Search team. Google, look out!