Interview Experince at Microsoft

Hope this note helps my juniors and the fellow MSPs who are going to appear for the interviews in the first week of 2011.First and foremost whether you get selected or not an interview experience In Microsoft is definitely worth remembering – its an outta world experience coding in a white board at a persons office . On 22nd Dec 2011 – I went to IDC . there were around 45-50 people . All of them had cleared the written tests . they were from colleges like VIT, KIT, DCE, Amity , NIT Warangal,etc . On the basis of the written tests I guess we were separated into 2 groups . 15 of us had personal one-to-one interviews schedeuled the rest of them were subjected to group interviews . I was in the first group . We were led to a conference hall where we were seated . Turn by turn few employees were coming to that room and calling the candidates name . the interviews were taking place at their individual office’s . First interview : A young looking guy wearing a black tee and jeans called me Interviewer : hie , I am shomik. I will be interviewing u today . Want some coffee before we get get started. Me: No, I ma ok . Interviewer : tell Me about ur self ? ( I replied talked about my school college , projects , y I like coding) Interviewer : what about ur hobbies ? ( I told him watching cricket , music , blogging ) Interviewer : u listen to Mettalica ? ( I replied Nope I ma not much in metal ) He pointed at his black tee and said it was his fav band . Interviewer : u no sorting ? ( me : yes) Interviewer : y is it required ? name few methods? What is internal and external sorting ? (Me I replied ll thye 3 questions very well) Interviewer : Dun call me ‘sir’ . call me shomik . Now tell me which is the most efficient sorting among the ones u mentioned ? Interviewer : Given 2 sorted arrays .Merge them at o(n) time ? Interviewer : u no link list right ( I said yes) Interviewer : reverse a link list without using extra space? How would u detect a loop in a link list ? how would u find where the loop has started ? (I replied all of them and wrote the codes too ) Interviewer : how would u add 2 polynomials using link list ? Interviewer : construct a Hash function for mapping all the characters( ASCII 1-128) . How would u detect the frequency of each character in a string using this function ? ( I answered all these) He was pleased . he replied . Interviewer : u don’t look like a geek u no that .u look like the pubbing sort of guy but ur base is pretty good . Interviewer : ok tell me one area u are weak on and tell me frankly (I said OS ) Interviewer : Ur fav Microsft product ? (i said Ms word) c thanks for ur time arka . !! TOTAL Interview time 1 hour Then I got a break of 10 mins The second interviewer was a middle aged serious looking lady Interviewer: tell me about ur self ? your final year project ? which platform u used ? etc etc Interviewer : can u solve this problem Input: 0, 8, 4, 12, 2, 10, 6, 14, 1, 9, 5, 13, 3, 11, 7, 15 a longest increasing subsequence is 0, 2, 6, 9, 13, 15. Me : told her the algo coded on white board Interviewer : what is tree? Few uses of them ? code to print the data in the leaf nodes of a tree Interviewer : What is AVL tree? Y it is used ? Write a code to balance an unbalanced AVL tree ? Interviewer : generate a tic toe game ? (me did this) Implement it in such a way that the computer never loses (me couldn’t do it ) Interviewer : Write the code for Finding all possible unique Paths in a Forest ? (tried it but wasn’t fully successful ) Interviewer : Display all the branches of a tree as separate link lists ? Interviewer :Enter a paragraph find the max occurring character and its frequency (DO NOT USE MOR THAN O(n) time ie 1 for loop only) Me:did it it was easy Interviewer :ALgo of Depth first and Breadth first serch . DURATIOn : 1 hr 20 Mins it was my longest interview for the day INTERVIEW 3 Interviewer : some intro asked about compilers assemblers ,the step by step compiling process etc Interviewer : I have a file of n lines ( I dunt no what N is ) I want to print the last 3 lines . how ? Interviewer : what is memory binding ? Interviewer : DMA , asked me about semaphores , write algo for semaphores Interviewer : asked me about file systems . FAT32 , NTFs (could only tell the full forms .) then it was over Duration : 20 Mins STAY TUNED FOR THE MSIT QUSTIONS --------------------------------------- --------------------------------------- MSIT I was assigned a recruiter . Remember recruiter is your best friend he will decide which people are gonna interview you so be frank with him . tell him about area of strengths and weakness. You will be asked to fill up a form in which you have to select the positions for which you want to apply.You can apply for ANYONE or BOTH . 1.SDET and SDE - requires knowledge of testing , test cases , programming logic ,product features 2 Service Engineer –requires knowledge of DBMS , networking , deployment of Softwares . You will be offered 3 to 4 interviews .your selection or rejection would depend upon ALL these interviews. I asked him (my recruiter) what whether applying to both would mean I have extra chance . My recruiter advised me Not to apply for “Service engineer “ Post as I MIGHT (might not also) get 1 interview with the Service management team and if it dint go well it would jeopardize my Chances for the SDE and SDET post as well . And also I am not very good in database .they ask a lot of question’s from Microsoft access OLEB connections data objects , the recruiter told me that . So me along with the candidates only applied for SDET and SDE post . Interview 4 (first of MSIT) ( 45 Mins) Interviewer : Hie I am shashk . where are you from ? Interviewer : Watched MI 4 ? ( I replied no ) Interviewer : let me give a puzzle ull enjoy solving it .4 man have to cross a bridge only 2 at a time . they have I torch with them and the torch must be carried by any pair or single person while crossing the bridge . tom cruise being the super hero takes 1 min, the other 2 guys take 2 min and 5 mins .finally Anil kapoor takes 10 mins . there is a Time Bomb fixed which will go off in 17 mins .Divide a way so that all 4 of them crosses .( TOOK A Hell lot of a time for me to solve this ) Interviewer : What are the next three numbers in this series? 4, 6, 12, 18, 30, 42, 60, 72, 102, 108, ?, ?, ? (DID This it was Easy) Interviewer: Every man in a village of 100 married couples has cheated on his wife. Every wife in the village instantly knows when a man other than her husband has cheated, but does not know when her own husband has. The village has a law that does not allow for adultery. Any wife who can prove that her husband is unfaithful must kill him that very day. The women of the village would never disobey this law. One day, the queen of the village visits and announces that at least one husband has been unfaithful. What happens? ME : assemble all the women in a place and all the husbands also . the women who doesn’t not see any culprit ,her husband is the culprit. (while answering this question I inadvertently used the word “sex” ones or twice . the interviwer told me to use the Word “sleep” instead :P ) Interviewer: how would you test a web browser ? Interviewer: design a Spice rack for the Blind . ( was prepared for this question from beginning .saw it I geek for geeks) Interviewer: Find the greater of the 2 numbers in 1 step without using if or any sort of comparison (me : couldn’t do this ). Interviewer: Add 2 numbers without using “+” sign .(me : did this using bit manipulation ) Interviewer: Design test cases for a Aero plane navigation Navigation system . (couldn’t answer this well) Interviewer: find whther a number is a Power of 2 in constant time o(1) . (again a bit manipulation program) Interviewer: Given a chance between development and testing which would u prefer . (me :testing ..) Interviewer:What are enumerations on Object oriented programming ( Me : sir I don’t know ) Interviewer: Can you write c # code . (Me : no but I can learn as it is very similar to java ) Interviewer: Any questions for me . (Me : No sir ) Interview 5 (2nd for MSIT ) ( 50 Mins) Interviewer: Hie I was not actually prepared for this interview . Interviewer: show me ur resume . (started asking qustions from it ) I had written subject of interest as Cloud . so he asked few questions from that . Interviewer: advantage of cloud. In a country like India where bandwidth is low can u suggest me some other solution other than cloud . (me I coudnt answer this one ) Interviewer: Do you no what is L value R Value in programming ? ( Me : no sir ) Interviewer: Okii . design an ATm for me and write what features you will implement there ? Interviewer: Now design atleast 3 test cases where your system will fail . (me : did it ) Interviewer: suppose I am running out of time which model of software development I should use ( Me : Rad Model . went on to describe it ) Interviewer: any drawbacks of this Model ( Me : told him ) Interviewer: design a system for the allocation of bandwidth in a college WIFI . How would the system react in case of high stress condition . suppose the director and a student logs into his account Implement a feature such that the director will get the prority and higher speed while browsing . (Me : I used labels here numbered from 1 to 7 . 7 being of higesht prority . whenever a request come s the label is checked if a lower prority user is using the wifi he is immediately premted to make space for the higher prority browser . etc etc download limiter , high traffic algorithm . designed many features ) Interviewer: How would you divide the above system into Modules for separate engineers to code ? Interviewer: If you had to add 2 new features to the website Rapidshare .com what would they be ? Interviewer: design the UI of a Dvd player . Then he asked me some basic queries , Interviewer: ok I am done with . You seem tired . have a coffee . We chatted and walked till the coffee enclosure . then he went to his office . I gave a call to my recruiter to arrange for the next interview . INTERVIEW 6 : (3rd for MSIT) ( 1 hour ) Interviewer: where are you from arka ? how did you come ? Tell me about your self . Interviewer: See I have designed a New aircraft and before using it for carry passengers I have given you the contract for testing it and ensuring thorough safety of the passengers . How would you do that .? (Me : told him about various measures I will take , engine safety , presuurized cabins .. etc etc ) Interviewer: write a program which will take 10 characters and find the most occurring character . I did ( he gave the input AAddam and said what will be the out put . I had not taken capital and small into account so the program would have given d .) Interviewer: correct the code . ( me : this time I was fully correct ) Interviewer: Now break the code . give an Input so that the program wont give right out output . Me: ( I thought for long and finaaly I gave a string of spaces ) Interviewer:One new feature you would like to see in Visual studio 2011 . ( coudnt answer this one ) Interviewer: what are break points in code . ( Me coudnt answer this one also) Interviewer: have you seen the UI of windows phone 7 ? ( Me : yes) Interviewer: Do you like it ? (Me : No sir , But it’s a personal Opinion ) Interviewer: Which is the Best Phone UI you have seen ? ( Me : sir I phone 4 without doubt ) Interviewer: I agree with you but we are catching up pretty fast. Interviewer: Suppose we have to out do Apple in the Ipod Market and you are told to design the features of a New Ipod like device .what features would u implement ? he gave me a pen and led me to the white board to draw it . (Me: I answered this pretty well . He seemed impressed finally ) Interviewer: thank you arka INTERVIEW 7 ( 30 Mins) Just when I thought the interview was over . My recruiter told me the Director of MSIT wanted to interview one of the candidates . there were only 3 candidates that time ( ALL MSPS). since the other were already in interviews he took me to a big cabin . he first went inside I was standing at the door . he came out took me in with Him introduced me to him and left . the interviewer was a old man late 50’s I guess . Interviewer: So did you like the campus ?(Me :yes sir ) Interviewer: We Dont have a dress code here .do you no y? ( Me : no) He went on to tell how MSIT is like a small family how the MSITians very close to each other . the work culture there etc etc I was Damn tired and pretty nervous also .So I listened patiently Interviewer: If not Microsoft then . ( Me : I am planning to Do Ms from USA , then again I will try in Microsoft ) Interviewer: you seem very passionate about Microsoft . y is it so . ( I went on to tell him how windows 95 start screen is etched in my childhood memories . went on to talk about Bill gates , his charity how he as a human being inspired me , den the famous video of Steve Ballmer shouting developer developer” ) Interviewer: (He pointed me to one of the photos on the wall there were 3 people in it . One was the interviewer , then standing beside was a very young steve ball mer , and the third person I could not recognize .) Can u recognize the 3 persons in the picture ? I couldn’t recognize the third one . he told me about it . Interviewer: Suppose I told you to Move Mount Everest how would u do ? (Me : Sir I would stand in front of it and move back wards . then the Mountain will move relative to me ) Interviewer: Suppose you are in a team . 2 of your members are constantly failing behind in their deadlines what would you do ? Interviewer: which languages you are competent in ? write a program to accept a string and print it in all these languages . Interviewer: how were your earlier interviews ( Me : quite good sir ) Interviewer: whats your age ? ( Me:21 Sir) Interviewer: I joined Ms when I was 30 .you are quite young and have a long way to go . don’t be disappointed if you cant make it this time . And Best of luck for your future ventures . IF I REMEMBER ANY MORE QUESTIONS I WILL ADD THEM . IF YOU THINK THIS WAS OF HELP TO YOU PLEASE LEAVE A ONE LINE COMMENT . iT TOOK ME A LOT OF TIME TO TYPE ALL THESE . BEST OF LUCK GUYS !!!! HOPE THIS TIME MANY MSPS MAKE IT THROUGH

MICROSOFT IMAGINE CUP

The software giant Microsoft is conducting a student.technology competition called "Imagine Cup 2010". There are lots of challenges/types of competition in this contest , I assure you will enjoy the contest .The registration method for the competition is mentioned below:

COPY PASTE THE FOLLOWING LINK IN YOUR BROWSER

https://imaginecup.com/registration/default.aspx?EmailID=&ReferralCode=arkabhattacharya1990&DisplayName=&School &Country=India

DO NOT CHANGE THE REFFERRAL CODE

Plz cross –check the referral code it shud be “arkabhattacharya1990” (without quotes)

Edit all your personal information , without changing the referral code .

Free softwares and ORIGINAL WINDOWS 7 DVDs at hefty discount WILL BE PROVIDED

Prizes for this competition include :

The top 3 finalists will receive a trip to the Worldwide Finals in
Warsaw, Poland.
Trip includes round trip coach airfare from major airport closest to
winners home, standard hotel accommodations, and select meals.
In addition, the top 3 finalists will receive one of the following cash prizes:

* First Place: $8,000 USD
* Second Place: $4,000 USD
* Third Place: $3,000 USD


And many more prizes yet other than this.Hope to see you all with prizes.

ARKA BHATTACHARYA

(MICROSOFT STUDENT PARTNER)

(for any enquiry about studentpartners program contact me at arkabhattacharya@student-partners.com)

CAPTURING THE CLOUD

Azure Services
The Windows® Azure™ Platform is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers. The Windows Azure Platform provides a range of functionality to build applications that span from consumer web to enterprise scenarios and includes a cloud operating system and a set of developer services. Fully interoperable through the support of industry standards and web protocols such as REST and SOAP, you can use the Azure services individually or together, either to build new applications or to extend existing ones.
Windows® Azure is a cloud services operating system that serves as the development, service hosting and service management environment for the Windows Azure Platform. Windows Azure provides developers with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft® data centers.


Windows Azure is currently in Community Technology Preview. Commercial availability for Windows Azure will likely be at the end of calendar year 2009.

Windows Azure is an open platform that will support both Microsoft and non-Microsoft languages and environments. To build applications and services on Windows Azure, developers can use their existing Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2008 expertise. In addition, Windows Azure supports popular standards and protocols including SOAP, REST, XML, and PHP.

RECURSION IN GOOGLE

Google Goes Funny Again! Falls Intentionally In Recursion
Google never fails to entertain us. This time when you search for Recursion on Google, it keeps on running spell check and displays Did you mean: recursion again and again.

Recursion is the term usually used in Computer Science and this word generally means – to have a activity again and again, forever because the activity itself consist of same activity. It is like two mirrors facing each other and displaying infinite trail of opposite images.
In recursion, the objects are repeated for infinite times. The iteration runs forever. Google displays this quality when you search for recursion.

Despite of clicking on recursion from spell checker – Did you mean, Google will keep on displaying it. Though the spelling is right, Google keeps on telling it again and again.
Try – http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=recursion

EASTER EGGS

What are Easter eggs ? You mite probably answer “ they are huge sugar laced eggs filled with chocolates or sweets that would be hidden by elders as a surprise during Easter time”

However in technical jargon ‘Easter eggs is something different .Wikipedia now defines it in this way “An Easter egg is an unintentional hidden message joke or a feature in a object movie ,book cd,dvd web page or a computer program”

Well c the last word of the above paragraph’ computer program’ .Yeah that inspired me to do a bit of research in Easter eggs hidden in computer programs .Most people think of computer engineers as serious geeks for whom Windows is even more important than well eh… wife(sorry bad joke).Nah all of them are not like that ..at least I am not like that..Well getting back to the point many coders have put great jokes up there sleeves into their programs ..its now for us to discover them..

The first easter egg I found was present in Windows 97 .if u type “Bill Clinton” and press Shift+F7 an UK Thesaurus dialogue box comes upon screen with a synonym “I would like to see her naked” .This was at the height of Monica Lewinsky scandal. To get this joke you must set your language setting in Word 97 to UK English.

Here is another one that works in almost every version of Word. Just type “=rand(5,10)” and press enter .You l get 10 paragraphs with 5 sentences each

Open word and type anything anything.Now select whatever you hav written and press control alt-+ and see the cursor change

There are a lot of easter eggs hidden in the web Browser Mozilla Firefox too .lets see some of them type in ‘about:mozilla’ and just see the magic

Or type in ‘about:robots’ and hold ur breath …I wont say find it out yourself

or type 'about: : rights' n see for yourself

Did you know that the flight number of the plane that had hit WTC ...on
9/11 was Q33N ....Open your Notepad in ur computer and type the flight
number i.e Q33N... Increase the Font Size to 72, Change the Font to
Wingdings. U will be amazed by the findings.

Here is a cool notepad secret type “Bush hid the facts “ in a notepad file and save it .then re-open it Whew!!where has the text gone

There are many other Easter eggs in other program .for example you can cheat and win in solitaire by pressing simultaneously Alt- Shift and 2 .

However one of the best is this one .navigate to www.yahoo.com. Make sure the speakers re on .Click on the dot under the exclamation mark of the mast head of Yahoo! .Enjoy

if you find any more such hidden tricks don forget to add in the comments sections

CD VS DVD

Have you ever wondered how does a combo drive play both cd and dvds .?

Why do combo drives often stop reading DVDs but are still able to read CDs?

First lets figure out the essential differnces between CD/ DVDs

DVDs can store more data than CDs for a few reasons:

• Higher-density data storage
• Less overhead, more area
• Multi-layer storage

Single-sided, single-layer DVDs can store about seven times more data than CDs. A large part of this increase comes from the pits and tracks being smaller on DVDs. Let's try to get an idea of how much more data can be stored due to the physically tighter spacing of pits on a DVD. The track pitch on a DVD is 2.16 times smaller, and the minimum pit length for a single-layer DVD is 2.08 times smaller than on a CD. By multiplying these two numbers, we find that there is room for about 4.5 times as many pits on a DVD. So where does the rest of the increase come from?

More Area
On a CD, there is a lot of extra information encoded on the disc to allow for error correction -- this information is really just a repetition of information that is already on the disc. The error correction scheme that a CD uses is quite old and inefficient compared to the method used on DVDs. The DVD format doesn't waste as much space on error correction, enabling it to store much more real information. Another way that DVDs achieve higher capacity is by encoding data onto a slightly larger area of the disc than is done on a CD.

Multiple-Layered Storage
To increase the storage capacity even more, a DVD can have up to four layers, two on each side. The laser that reads the disc can actually focus on the second layer through the first layer. Here is a list of the capacities of different forms of DVDs:

COMBO DRIVES

Every CD/DVD ROM has a lens which is used for reading Data.In case of combo Drive

The same read head lens is used to read both CD's and DVD's

There are two essential physical differences between CD and DVD disc.

First, the smallest DVD pits are only 0.44 micron in diameter; the equivalent CD pits are nearly twice as large, or 0.83 micron wide.

And DVD data tracks are only 0.74 micron apart, wherea 1.6 microns separate CD data tracks. So although a DVD is the same size as a CD,its data spiral is upward of 11 kilometers long-more than twice the length of a CD's data spiral.

To read the smaller pits, a DVD player's readout beam must achieve finer focus than a CD player's does. In order to do this, it uses a read semiconductor laser that has a wave length of 635 to 650 nanometer. In contrast, CD players use infrared laser with a longer wavelength of 780 nanometer. Also, DVD players employ a more powerful focusing lens-one having a higher numerical aperture than the lens in a CD player

In that case after a particular time if the lens weakens only CD's are read and not DVD's.

INCREASE BROADBAND SPEED

ONLY FOR BSNL USERS

Speed up BSNL Broadband Internet Connection
To overcome slow BSNL DNS problem, we will use high speed DNS servers from OpenDNS. OpenDNS is third party DNS Server used to speed up BSNL Broadband internet connection

Steps to speed up BSNL Broadband Internet :
1. Open Control Panel -> Networking and Sharing Center -> Manage Network Connection.
2. Now a window showing all networks will be opened. Select BSNL Connection -> Right click -> Properties.
3. Now, double click on Internet Protocol Version(TCP/IPv4) and in newly opened window at bottom, select “Use the following DNS Server address”
4. And fill these 2 DNS Addresses in two fields:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

and hit OK. Thats it. Your BSNL Internet Broadband DNS Servers changed.

Now, your BSNL internet broadband speed will be increased. Thus, you can now enjoy high speed BSNL Internet broadband. I hope you’ll like this BSNL Internet speed increasing hack/trick. If you have any problem or other high speed BSNL DNS Servers, please mention it in comments section

BING

Microsoft’s latest search engine BING was launched a few days back and its has already started creating ripples worldwide .BING is the much touted replacement to the now defunct Windows Live search. I experimented with it one whole day and the results were quite surprising and quite pleasing in many cases .For instance when I typed a part of my blogsite address and searched not only did it show the site and the post in that site but also the entries I had made on Facebook regarding those blogposts .Apart from that I had published an article in DIGG which I had long forgotten ,I got its link too from the search results .Another feature of its which i liked is the preview mode where by just moving the cursor over the web page address or link will give you a short preview of whta is in store there

Though it is too early to say that it a replacement for Google its definitely shows a lot of promise .SO friends what are u waiting for just BING!!!!!