Well I had a phone interview for a contract position at MS today, and I got invited back for an in-person on Monday. :) I'm still not sure if I want to accept a contract position or try to find a FTE position though.
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Well I had a phone interview for a contract position at MS today, and I got invited back for an in-person on Monday. :) I'm still not sure if I want to accept a contract position or try to find a FTE position though.
Alot of people do the contracting stuff to get their foot in the door. It is INCREDIBLY hard to get noticed straight out of college for a FTE position.Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Anozireth',index.php?page=Thread&postID=99856#pos t99856
Usually what happens is, you get a contract job, you make yourself invaluable to the team, and they offer you a FTE position at the end of your contract.
That's definitely the impression I've gotten from talking to people and reading blogs, but the college section of MS's careers website would sure have you believe otherwise. :) The fact that my school isn't on the list of schools to choose from when entering your degree information probably doesn't help my case either.Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Vyndree',index.php?page=Thread&postID=99877#post9 9877
I do have some more questions if you don't mind, but I don't want to clog up the public forum with a personal conversation. Not to mention I already totally hijacked this thread. Sorry! :D
Well, the hard part is just getting your resume SEEN.
When I submitted my resume, I managed to get through to the phone interview (which is a feat unto itself) and never heard back.
A coworker of my father's had been wanting to get me an internship since high school but couldn't since he worked so closely with y dad -- he demanded that they get me an in-person interview and from what I understand had a very strong conversation with the phone interviewer.
I did two full loops with two groups within microsoft and didn't receive a single "no hire" from any of the people I interviewed with. And that's how I got my job. Somewhat atypical of the norm, but I imagine the phone interviewer wasn't in a good position, what with both teams during the in-person interview giving me job offers.
Suvega got interviewed during college by an on-campus recruiter. This is more typical. I'll let him tell his own story if he chooses but I believe he did the on-site interview as well.
Most of the people I know don't get FTE positions at microsoft straight out of college. Most are contractor-turned-FTE, or have a decent amount of experience prior to entering Microsoft. The interview loop can be killer -- they want to see how you think, not what you were trained to say. The most important part of a MS interview is to ask questions -- sometimes they'll purposely give you a vague interview question just to see if you'll clarify the requirements or not.
Here's some of the more interesting questions I've been asked:
- How would you test a soda can?
- There is a book in a library that you cannot find. The library has a card catalog and a ornery librarian who will only answer yes/no questions. Find the book.
- (I can't recall the exact number for these... I've filled them with <#> as a placeholder)
Two men are outside of a house. They can see the house number. The first guy wants the second to guess his 3 daughters' ages.
He gives him two hints:
the sum of the daughters ages equals the house number
the product of the daughters' ages is <#>
The second man looks at the first and goes "Well, I have a couple of solutions but I think I'm going to need another hint"
The first man nods and says "Yes, yes you do need another hint. My older daughter's hair is red."
What is the house number?
(answer: There are two solutions based on the numbers that I've forgotten where there is a "twin". In essence, the product can be factored out such that there are only two options with a duplicate value.
The answer? The one with the "twins" as the younger. Since the "older" daughter's hair is red, that means the younger set of daughters is the twin)
Add together, get the house number.
That last one was my phone interview question.
Wow I think you were reading the questions I had been writing down to ask you! :P Pretty much everything you said answers something I had been wondering. I've got a few more if you don't mind though...
- Is it normal/common for a team to offer a contractor a FTE position at the end of their contract, assuming they've done a great job? Or are the contractor positions short term because the work will be finished when the contract is up and the position is no longer needed?
- Do you see people pressured into consistently working overtime, even when a project is not near its ship date?
- I've heard some horror stories of contractors being treated very poorly, is there any truth to that?
- Would it hurt me to admit that I prefer to use non-MS products for some things, such as using Firefox for most of my Javascript debugging? (The debugger in the IE8 beta looks promising if I could get it to work right!)
- Do you have any job openings? :D
Thanks for taking the time to help me out, I really appreciate all the internal perspectives I can get. :thumbup:
In the vast majority of cases, yes -- contractor positions often become full time. That being said, you have to be GOOD at your job to be offered a FT position -- sucky contractors don't stick around too long.Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Anozireth',index.php?page=Thread&postID=99907#pos t99907
There are cases where there is short-term need but it's very easy to tell based on the job assignment. If you're contracting for any sort of design work, it usually is a hole that needs to be filled.
Full times? Absolutely. We're paid on salary, not per hour. Contractors? Typically never -- because they get paid overtime.Quote:
Do you see people pressured into consistently working overtime, even when a project is not near its ship date?
Some teams are worse than others. I was in Live search, and that was the worst work/life experience ever. They say MS has an emphasis on work/life balance but personally I haven't seen it until this new team I'm on. Personal advice: work on a shipped product. Online services means that "anything can be hotfix'ed and it'll be active within a couple hours" -- and they have the (incorrect) notion that everything that they don't test thoroughly thanks to this mentality can be hotfixed day or night... Which means you're on call 24/7.
Don't let me scare you, though, that was honestly a bad team due to their processes and their aloofness towards test. Other teams are much better. Just be careful what you choose.
Yes and no. Contractors are not treated any less at th workplace -- in fact most of my favorite co-workers prefer contracting over full time, and one just recently moved to full time.Quote:
I've heard some horror stories of contractors being treated very poorly, is there any truth to that?
I have heard that, at one point in time, contractors had the same benefits as fulltimes when it came to morale events, but then Microsoft was sued for not also giving contractors health benefits. As a result, contractors are forbidden from going to certain morale events to prevent that issue. That's the only time I've heard of them being treated "less" -- but they're also paid more on average, so....
There are plenty of people who don't use non-MS products -- even using Firefox/google/ipods at the office. However, I wouldn't think that advertising this fact would gain you any brownie points, so I'd probably keep it to myself at the interview.Quote:
Would it hurt me to admit that I prefer to use non-MS products for some things, such as using Firefox for most of my Javascript debugging? (The debugger in the IE8 beta looks promising if I could get it to work right!)
Employees are encouraged to "dogfood" MS products at work, for the most part. Particularly if it's an area you work in. So be prepared that you might be "politely encouraged" to use MS beta products.
Not on my team that I know of... :( I'll look around though -- college hire positions are typically hard to find... Usually they want experience.Quote:
Do you have any job openings? :D
Thanks a ton for all the answers. :thumbup: The question about non MS products came up because today in my phone interview I was asked how I debug Javascript. Not really any way to dodge that, so I figured it would be better to tell the truth. Besides, Firebug is just awesome!
I think I would definitely feel better about accepting a contractor position if I'm fortunate enough to be offered one now. The only real reservation I have is with the 100 day "vacation" after a year.
My finance's parents live about 3 blocks from the main campus, so I would drive by at least once a month all through college and it was a big motivator to think, "Hey, I could do that!" Hopefully I'll be "living the dream" soon. :)
I worked briefly at MS a few years ago, and I'd recommend as another thing to do is google for microsoft interview questions/techniques etc. There are quite a lot of weblogs etc that just talk about people's experiences getting jobs there. I found that a lot of the interview questions thrown at me were recycled from earlier interviews, particularly the puzzle-type questions (that I find are completely useless for interviewing engineers but that's a separate rant).
I was on one of the worst teams ever at MSFT. I quit after 1 year and 1 day. Your work experience will vary widely depending on who you work for, but that is likely just like any big company. I work at Apple now, on the best team evar, and it's a similar deal; knowing someone helps get you looked at, and the experience varies from team to team. That said we're just about to hire someone from a resume cold e-mailed to human resources, so that does happen. Just blow everyone away in the interview 8)
I have read more blogs than I can count in the last few days. :thumbsup:
Interviewing at MS is without a doubt the hardest interview I've ever personally done. I didn't get far in the process, but thanks to having some friends on the inside I managed to experience part of it. My experience didn't line up quite right for the build lab position I was going for, but it was a really good experience either way.
I've got two friends who still work for MS, office testers I think, another who's been there as an FTE (office build) and again later as a contractor (vista terminal services). All have great things to say about how the interview process there works and at the very least makes you better at interviewing.
I have since become a hiring manager and am absolutely amazed at how poorly some people interview, I know some of the guys I've interviewed probably had leet mad skills, but you blow it so easily when sitting across the table from opportunity.