This post is based on a true story and also the book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (affiliate link) which is a classic kids storybook and current favorite for bedtime at our house. The interspersed quotes are from the book.
In my last semester of college, I had a good offer from a company I liked that I was poised to accept. Then Microsoft called and wanted me to fly up for an interview based on an on-campus interview that I had with them. Being a southern girl with family and a fiance firmly planted in Texas, there was very little reason I would want to move up to Seattle … but still, it was Microsoft. So I arranged to fly out late that Thursday night, after I was done with work and classes, in order to be done in time for my main offer’s acceptance deadline.
“I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
I am one of those people who not only does very poorly on little sleep but also does not drink coffee (possibly related?). So I woke up the morning of the interview running a tad late (typical) and very very tired from having gotten in so late the night before. It was still dark outside and rainy and I had to drive this monstrous Chevy Suburban (that was all they had and I’d never driven one before) on the slick streets.
After a brief meeting with the HR/recruiting person, they had me go on a coffee meetup with someone from my school. We went to one of the Starbucks kiosks inside the buildings and (since I don’t do coffee and it was chilly) ordered a hot chocolate. We chatted and I got about half-way through the hot chocolate before I realized it had a funny taste to it. Another sip confirmed – I think it had bad milk (or something) in it. Yuck, and uh oh.
My bath was too hot, I got soap in my eyes, my marble went down the drain, and I had to wear my railroad-train pajamas. I hate my railroad-train pajamas.
Then we started the actual interviews. First I got some questions about writing the code to sum up the numbers in an array or something like that. Then I got this gem: “Let’s say you were tasked with designing parking meters – how would you do it?”. Of course I know what they are, but I’ve never used them before. Seriously, I live in Texas, we have space enough for parking lots. So, guessing what it would be like to use them … think think. Uh… well, requiring the use of coins is probably a deal-breaker for many prospective parkers, so I would allow the use of dollar bills… and then I sort of fizzed out after that.
The next day, when I visited Pike’s Point, I saw that the parking meters in Seattle are actually 1 per block (instead of 1 every car or 2 cars) and they accept credit cards and have touch screens. Never seen that before or realized it could ever be cost-effective. I even had the thought “accept credit cards?” flit through my mind and figured, no way. Wow, clearly we were operating from a totally different starting point on what is possible. So of course then I had a million ideas, but too late.
But then again, that sort of design overkill is exactly what Microsoft is known for, and exactly the kind of over-engineering that I eschew in my development. Aside from bugs in functionality, I have no issues with the way that parking meters work. If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Microsoft does not agree, apparently.
So then we went to the shoe store to buy some sneakers. Anthony chose white ones with blue stripes. Nick chose red ones with white stripes. I chose blue ones with red stripes but then the shoe man said, We’re all sold out. They made me buy plain old white ones, but they can’t make me wear them.
Somehow, out of the marketing-esque descriptions on the brochure they handed me 2 minutes before my on-campus interview, I had selected that I wanted to be a “Program Manager”. During each of my 5 interviews, the person would explain that a program manager is someone who does not really write code, but rather encourages the engineer who writes code to do it well, but has no real power at all. They all emphasized this. This ability to influence the engineer to make something that the customer would want and to do it on a reasonable schedule, but have no real ability to affect change at all.
They would state this and then ask, “Does that sound ok?”. “NO it doesn’t!” I want to write code. I don’t want to be an influencer on the coder. But there I was stuck in a whole day of interviewing for a position I did NOT WANT. So I said, “Sure, … ” and then followed up with some lame example of how I worked in a team and influenced some positive outcome. Even I didn’t believe me.
“It was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
Around the second interview, my stomach started to grumble. And then gurgle. And then gargle. And then we moved to full on cramping. That damn hot chocolate. In the 10 minute break between interviews (that included walking/drive time between buildings) I would run to the bathroom to do unseemly things. I think my face looked green. I did not feel good! But the day just went on like some horrible Microsoft gauntlet of runny poo (sorry).
There were lima beans for dinner and I hate limas.
There was kissing on TV and I hate kissing.
When it was finally over, I felt no (ok, a little) hope but a whole lot of relief. They had already setup a dinner with two program managers that evening. They explained that I should definitely go to Pike’s Place because, among other things, the original Starbucks was there (insert feigned excitement).
They took me to a very stuffy restaurant that is one of their “favorites” where the menu is a single page and everything has weird ingredients and I was way underdressed. The waiters all wore black and white and had towels draped over their arms and I just wanted to sleep. I was too tired to talk much but I don’t think the program managers noticed. They were very happy to converse with each other about how great they both were and laugh about people working for companies other than Microsoft.
At some point one of them asked if I liked sushi and I said I did. Then he commented that they would not touch sushi that was made in Texas. They thought it was hilarious.
“Some days are like that… Even in Australia.”
So, no I did not get the job. And no, I don’t think I would make a good “Program Manager”. And no, I don’t think I fit in Seattle or anyplace where they consider food in entire regions of the country to be laughable. And in case you’re wondering, the original Starbucks looks like all the other Starbucks except there is a plaque and a longer line.
I accepted my other offer doing actual software development, at the company that took me out to PF Chang’s and again for pool and some drinks, and lived happily ever after.
I hate that “parking-meter” interview question. If I was there, I think I’d say, “I think I’d say to myself, how would Microsoft design it, and how would Apple design it, and then, I’d design it the Apple way, so that when people use this thing, they won’t curse, and swear, and say, ‘who designed this thing, surely someone in Redmond who cared about buzzword-compliance and features-uber-alles.”
I would find the politics of a large software organization really difficult to handle, more than anything. I could only work at a big company (apple, microsoft, or anybody) really, if I got to work somewhere where nobody knew about me, or what I do, and I didn’t have to attend weekly meetings with “Program Managers in charge of User Experience for the Round Shiny Start Button”.
Warren
Sorry things didn’t go better for you. Hopefully your next interview is a much better experience. I will say though, you have to be willing to say no and answer honestly to get the right opportunity for you. I understand that can be hard when looking for that first big job, but you sound like you’ll have plenty of opportunities.
Make sure you put context into your answer for scenarios that may be sensitive to locale. If you don’t have or use meters in your area, you might suggest moving to Texas where they don’t need them. Surely that would get a laugh.
Good luck and.
@Warren I hear you and I think you have a good point about not only not wanting to BE a “Program Manager” (as defined by them) but not even wanting to work WITH them.
@Ryan You’re absolutely right about being up-front in interviews, even if it may cost you the job offer. I love your suggestions about the “moving to Texas” answer.
Just a helpful pointer – your header link to “what is code anthem” returns a 404 error when I try to access it from this article. Looks like it’s just a simple relative url problem: <a href=”?page_id=2″ rel=”nofollow”>
Overally, other than the bad milk, your day didn’t sound too horrible :O) – when you started talking about driving the Suburban I was expecting a crash before you ever even reached the MS offices.
Cheers,
Bill
@Bill Thanks for the note. We just moved hosting this weekend and missed it!
Thankfully it wasn’t that kind of a bad day. Just the kind where you can’t seem to catch a break.
Never again will I complain about my “bad” interviews. This story pretty much takes the cake.
That does sound like a pretty rotten sort of day. As someone who lives in Seattle but would not fit at Microsoft, I’d just like to say that not everyone in Seattle thinks it’s appropriate to “consider food in entire regions of the country to be laughable”.
Sorry your interview didn’t go that well, but your assessment of Microsoft seems pretty unfair.
” If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Microsoft does not agree, apparently.”
I’m not sure how you came up with that paragraph. MS loves over-engineering because one interviewer asked you to design a parking meter? The question was probably to see how you’d go about gathering requirements for something, not so much the specific details you came up with. A parking meter is a fairly common object that most people are familiar with, so it’s not like it’s an unfair question. If you really had no idea on parking meters, start asking questions. If you’re in a job and someone gives you a task to gather requirements for something you don’t know much about, you shouldn’t just rattle off a few things, you should start asking questions.
It sucks you interviewed for a PM when you wanted to be a developer, but you did say you wanted to interview for a PM position. If you weren’t sure what each position was, again, you should have asked questions to clarify. You want to be a developer, and isn’t one of the choices “Software Development Engineer”? Or it might be “Design”, but still, I can’t help but think that it was your own fault there.
Those two PMs that you went to dinner with do sound like douches though. There are a lot of really nice people at Microsoft, and no, most of us don’t eat at snobby, rich places. All of our team lunches are at places like Red Robin or similar places like that. 90% of the people here are your average nerd, yes, even the PMs.
Oh, and finally, in defense of PMs, good ones are awesome, bad ones suck. They interface with customers for you, and really can take a lot of the load off in terms of meetings/reporting status/gathering status from others, so you don’t have to.
@Some dude I think you’re right about the question – while I don’t think it’s a good interview question, I definitely could have performed better on the answer.
As for the PM/developer question, I literally had a colorful brochure in my hands for 2 minutes, and none of it mentioned writing code, but merely “this type of person works well here, this type of person works well there”. I could have asked questions, but in my college-innocence, hiring a comp-sci major for a non-coding position didn’t even seem possible, especially for a place like Microsoft. It’s one of those not knowing what you don’t know things.
I don’t mean to vilify Microsoft. After swinging into the Java/Linux/OSS world for a few years, I’m actually developing in .NET these days. I don’t think my performance that day was worthy of a job offer and, for me, everything worked out in the end.
Sorry to hear you had a bad interview experience
When I was first interviewing at MS, I chose to try the PM role like you did (I was rejected, but that’s another story). I only had a vague understanding of what PM’s did (my explination was from Office Space ‘They take the specs from the customers, and give it to the Engineers’).
Now that I’m a developer, I couldn’t get nearly as much work done w/o my PM. Whenever somebody wants to change something about your product or feature, they go through the PM. The PM will either say “Yea, that’s easy” or “Woah… are you crazy?” This change could be something as simple as changing what a string says in the UI, or as large as ‘Your feature does X, we want it to do Y instead’. This leaves the developer out of flame wars & huge debates that come up when one person says “No, that’s dumb” and allows developers to focus on writing code. That’s not to say that developers don’t have that say, it’s just that the developer isn’t the first point of contact for those issues.
As a dev, having a PM that you can explain technical details to why something won’t work, or why something will take 5 days to fix is a real help. That’s why some PM’s were CS students – they can understand the language that the devloper talks in.
Oh, and about the snobby people that took you to dinner, all I can say is that not everyone out here at MS is that way. They probably took you to somewhere in Belltown (that place is SOOO swanky), but I’m sure all they wanted to do was impress you.
Where are your interstitial bad-day quotes from? Presumably something famous that has completely passed me by….
@James: “This post is based on a true story and also the book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (affiliate link) which is a classic kids storybook and current favorite for bedtime at our house. The interspersed quotes are from the book.”
Sorry to hear about the bad interview experience.
I also had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day interviewing at MS recently.
It started off with my recruiter making me wait for 1 hour and 15 minutes in the lobby and went downhill from there.
Anyway, your story made me feel better. At least I didn’t drink bad milk!
And I’m glad you found a company that is a better fit. I’m looking forward to finding one, too.
I forgot to share the best part: the people on the interviewing team told me that their boss had just mandated that they could *only* be in meetings TWENTY hours a week. Can you imagine? All that wasted brainpower…