Arrghgh.. The only thought I have to describe my morning interview process with Microsoft Dublin. It was a position I thought I was very well qualified for and very motivated for. Unfortunately, it's been a long time since I've been a programmer and I was unable to answer a hash table question. (Actually, I chose not to try since I would have just been blowing smoke..)
But I suspect, as with most phone screens, anything you cannot answer will generally rule you out of consideration. I think I did well on the thought problem, solved both halves, but I rather think it was pointless after my failure on the hash table question.
One might argue that a senior PM or GPM shouldn't need to worry too much about technical implementation details but the reality is that the PM roles at Microsoft frequently require some serious technical chops and in this instance, I imagine that a good answer to the question was very necessary.
Frustrating, as the Careers site at MS is just hopeless as an avenue to getting a job - it's a channel for fodder. This interview came through LinkedIn (as most of my best ones have) and I'll continue to pursue that.
Time for me to go back and review basic programming concepts so I don't have the issue arise again.
Posted by artandscience at July 24, 2008 09:57 AM