I'm with you in disagreeing with #4, but I generally disagree with most of his points, simply on the grounds that his article might be better titled, "Passing t

I'm with you in disagreeing with #4, but I generally disagree with most of his points, simply on the grounds that his article might be better titled, "Passing the Microsoft Interview when a Jerk Like Me is on the Interview Loop." That's a little harsh, so let me elaborate. It's a matter of explicit policy at MS, and at least implicit policy everywhere, that interviewers are looking for candidates that will be successful at the company. This unpacks to "candidates who will do excellent work with minimal supervision and stay and grow in their careers with the company." If we grant this (I think uncontroversial) goal of the interview process, then we can measure each of his rules by how well they serve that goal, and ask generally if there are any rules at all that will ultimately serve it. While "Know Your Stuff" is trivial and uncontroversial (and therefore not worth mentioning), the remainder of his points 2-7 amount to telling you how to say your shibboleths. I mean, if you just knew the answer to the problem (for example, if you had seen it before), could you just present the solution and be done? Or do you have to "Describe the Algorithm?" The smoking gun, however, is point 7: This is just good psychology. Make the interviewer feel important by spending a few minutes at the end asking about the interviewer's team and work. He's telling you to suck up. To him. Personally. Sometimes you just get a freebie, as in this case. So many of the author's implicit fantasies leak through his prose that we can easily dismiss him. To name two: First, he believes that there can be "7 tips" for passing an effective interview process, not one that is mere kabuki. An effective interview process screens out the stylistic theater. This is an ultimately unsolvable problem, unfortunately. Candidates always simply rehearse their shibboleths. Second, the author thinks that he's arrived and that he's reduced to practice the means of telling who else has arrived. Implicitly, this means that he views how he's judged himself ready is the approved way to judge others. The circularity of that belief is the playground of Dunning & Kreuger. If he wants either to find truly valuable candidates or to be able to assess himself critically in a manner that will prod him to grow, he needs to relinquish his rule-based and ultimately smug beliefs about how to evaluate himself and others.