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Microsoft drops brain teasers from employee interview process
The interview process for Silicon Valley developer jobs has always had a reputation of being an arcane trial by fire exercise designed to weed down thousands of applicants to just the selected few antisocial geniuses.
Microsoft has however been making an effort to improve their hiring process to make it more useful and inclusive, and in a blog post John Montgomery, partner director of program management at Microsoft, explained the changes Microsoft has made to the process, which has meant cutting out such as questions as how many golf balls will fit into a 747.
Rethinking how we interview in Microsoft's Developer Division.
Also at Business Insider.
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Microsoft Drops Brain Teasers From Employee Interview Process
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 31 2018, @11:49AM (13 children)
Diversity. Even Microsoft has caught the disease. Whatever approach to hiring they have used in the past has WORKED FOR THEM. Plain and simple, they sit on are near the top of the pyramid, because their practices have WORKED.
"Oh, we've been successful enough - we're going to change things up, and start counting how many of each gender, how many of each color, how many of each height, how many extroverts and introverts. To hell with making money, we're going to play silly games now! Each of you needs to fill out this questionnaire, telling us how many languages you speak, how many dead languages, how many made up languages, your favorite color, . . . . . "
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31 2018, @03:53PM (1 child)
The light in the Earth's shadow can't change because the moon is passing through it. So how does the lunar eclipse start out black, and end red?
Lunar eclipse time lapse [vimeo.com]
Next eclipse: January 20 2019 [timeanddate.com]
Video: Why is eclipse red? [businessinsider.com]
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 01 2019, @03:39AM
Contrast. Your eyes (and video cameras) don't see the dim red light because of the bright light from the parts of the Moon that are still illuminated. But in a total eclipse situation you no longer have that glare.
Satan is the only would-be god of lies in your theology. A perfect being like God would have no reason or need to lie to us in any way. It's not surprising to me that you descend into outright blasphemy among your other bits of cognitive dissonance.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31 2018, @04:17PM (6 children)
MS got a near monopoly in the early 90's and has been riding that position ever sense. No significant new product or idea has expanded outside of that position, except possibly the Xbox. When they have to compete on merit alone, they keep failing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31 2018, @04:24PM
correction: "ever since"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Monday December 31 2018, @04:27PM (2 children)
Just curios but what exactly was new and significant about the Xbox? There was already Nintendo consoles, Sony Playstation etc that had been out for decades already when the Xbox was released. Not to mention the multitude of gaming consoles (not "home" computers etc) that had fallen by the roadside up until that point. There wasn't anything technically impressive with it as far as I can recall. At least nothing revolutionary that had not been seen before. It seemed more like just another MS move trying to squeeze into another market with all their Windows-cash that they didn't know what to do with such as mp3 players, computer peripherals, mobile phones, computer games ... There just doesn't seem to be a market they don't like to choke their way into by tossing large amounts of dollars onto the burning pile of shit that it eventually turns into. Has there been a successful venture so far? Browsers failed, their search engines have been shit. I guess the Xbox is some kind of shining beacon in that regard.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lentilla on Tuesday January 01 2019, @01:26AM (1 child)
DirectX? (I don't actually know the answer - but that's my best guess.) If game developers can write for PC and painlessly port to Xbox (or vice-versa) then XBox immediately becomes far more attractive than other consoles.
So you are probably correct in saying there was nothing particularly special about the Xbox - except that Microsoft was able to take advantage of its monopoly position. Business as usual.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday January 01 2019, @01:59PM
Could be, I didn't consider that. But it's probably true. It was probably a double win for the developers. That said it was fairly bad for PC gaming since the conversions from Xbox->PC was normally horribly crappy. You could really tell which was the, bad, conversion titles -- frame locks and the game was so obviously used to be played with a controller instead of the normal mouse+keyboard combo (some didn't even bother to change the graphics telling you to hit the X-button etc).
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday January 01 2019, @12:54AM (1 child)
Azure would suggest differently. They're actually a viable alternative to AWS in many cases, despite having had to play serious catch-up in this area.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 01 2019, @09:49PM
Did that actually come out of MS, or did they buy their way into competitiveness like they did with everything else?
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday December 31 2018, @05:46PM
True.
Another point - one has to satisfy customer requirements; even those that have nothing to do with the product itself. If clients want the project partially done by lesbian Eskimo of challenging abilities, let them have it. Microsoft's advantage is that it can afford such requirements, while a smaller shop might not. That's why diversity is supported by big business regardless of costs.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 31 2018, @07:58PM (1 child)
Microsoft had caught that disease many, many years ago. The splashscreens on the Visual Studio 2008 installer are testimony to that.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 31 2018, @08:29PM
I wouldn't know. I don't install Microsoft products.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Monday December 31 2018, @10:08PM
Microsoft dominates because Bill Gates was willing to bend, and frequently break, the boundaries of legality; Not because of the quality of its products.