5 ms·

This isn't secret news, but when you interview at MS there is always a secret / hidden interviewer. This is publicly known information from Cracking the Coding

This isn't secret news, but when you interview at MS there is always a secret / hidden interviewer. This is publicly known information from Cracking the Coding interview. This person is called the as appropriate and you only meet them if you pass all the prior interviews. Per his writeup, he did not meet that person, which means that he most likely did not pass the interview. He also for some reason didn't follow up on the results of the interview for 6 months, which is unique as most candidates will reach out. Assuming he actually filled out a job requisition, which he probably did to interview, he also should have gotten status from that requisition, so things are a little fishy. I do not know anything about his case directly, but I would bet that he did not pass the interview and a decision was made to not bring him on as a result. If Microsoft was trolling him to just pick his brain, they would have done more than two small events, and wouldn't have bothered to reach out to tell him they were releasing a product. This response also burns any bridges that he had built with the team. He could have still potentially made something of his product if he had kept that relationship open and used his leverage as an existing package manager owner to influence WinGet. If I was him, I would have at a minimum asked for feedback far earlier than wait for 6 months.

lame88 6y ago
> And then, I didn’t hear anything back from anyone at Microsoft for six months. This does not mean he did not ask during that time.
- intern4tional 6y ago
  Right, but if he did and hadn't heard back I would have expected him to note that he asked. It's a significant thing to not note.
  - somebrody 6y ago
    He has since noted it. What do you think now?
  - alasdair_ 6y ago
    He mentions this at the bottom of the article. He followed up and continue to get radio silence, even to the point that HR ignored his request for reimbursable expenses.
    - kayone 6y ago
      To clarify, they did fix the reimbursement issue but ignored the interview update issue.
tracker1 6y ago
My understanding is when MS decides they aren't going to hire, they cut off all communication, total lot drop. Sometimes at their own campus, no feedback at all. It's really an angering experience imo. I mean, I get it from a litigious mindset, but still not very humane.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  That's not true, usually you'll get a message from the recruiter. You might not get interview feedback, but you'll know if you got turned down. Even if you don't, you submit applications through a recruiting site, and it tells you the current status of your application. It'll tell you if the application was rejected.
  - munchbunny 6y ago
    Replying to myself, because the sibling comment is clearly at odds with what I'm saying, and I think that deserves to be addressed with more nuance than my first comment did. I think there's a lot of variation in the quality of your interview experience when you interview at Microsoft based on how on top of things the recruiter is, how much the hiring manager prioritizes candidate experience, and headcount/budget complexities. Some teams don't have recruiters, so then the candidate experience is whatever the hiring manager makes time for. I don't doubt the horror stories. For context, several years ago I applied for three different roles. I got rejected at the resume screen for one of them, rejected after the first phone interview for another, and I ended up taking an offer from the third. For both rejections, I got the news by email notification through Microsoft's careers app, not from the recruiter or from the hiring manager. I think it's a really impersonal way to find out after you've already done an interview round. The specific point I was making is that, contrary to the parent comment but not the sibling comment, there is a standard way of doing things that ends with following up with the candidate. And, as a candidate, you do have explicit ways of figuring out what happened to your application, even if finding out you failed an interview via an app is kind of shitty. It's definitely not standard to ghost the candidate.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    I waited a week and a half with no reply/response from anyone... It was the third email a few weeks after that finally got a dismissive response. This was around 2004 iirc, not sure if it's changed significantly since, or when your experience is related or where/what you were interviewing for.
ahelwer 6y ago
Reminds me of: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en How exactly could a PM interview process (which is just asking you to walk through a bunch of design scenarios) give a stronger hiring signal than having developed a product the company wanted to acqui-hire? Honestly somewhat insulting that they made him go through a full external interview loop. At most it should have been some informal chats of the sort you get when transferring teams internally.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  > Honestly somewhat insulting that they made him go through a full external interview loop. Wait, what? So if someone is a "name brand" celebrity, they should get to jump the queue and coast by with an "informal chat?" How is that fair? I don't care if I'm interviewing John Carmack, he's getting the same evaluation process I would give to any other senior candidate. Software Engineering's got enough problems with interviewing--it doesn't need an aristocracy that gets special treatment.
  - ahelwer 6y ago
    Technical interviews aren't a hazing ritual that we should all suffer equally out of some misplaced idea of equality. They're just one way of informing the decision of whether to hire someone.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    I find it unlikely that even large companies put their superstar famous hires through the same hiring process.
    - defnotashton2 6y ago
      They don't for sure given a certain point. It is known. Have you ever heard of a formal interview process for execs.. No.
      - 6y ago
kayone 6y ago
I did, I've since updated the article at the end to note this, > There was an issue with my travel reimbursement, So I contacted the HR contact and at the same time asked about the Interviews, She told me someone will get back to me about that and they never did. This was on Feb 14th, 2020.
alpb 6y ago
He was talking about the money was discussed even before coming into the interviews. This makes me think if he was brought to a sham on-site interview in the first place.

lame88 6y ago

> And then, I didn’t hear anything back from anyone at Microsoft for six months. This does not mean he did not ask during that time.

intern4tional 6y ago
Right, but if he did and hadn't heard back I would have expected him to note that he asked. It's a significant thing to not note.
- somebrody 6y ago
  He has since noted it. What do you think now?
- alasdair_ 6y ago
  He mentions this at the bottom of the article. He followed up and continue to get radio silence, even to the point that HR ignored his request for reimbursable expenses.
  - kayone 6y ago
    To clarify, they did fix the reimbursement issue but ignored the interview update issue.

tracker1 6y ago

My understanding is when MS decides they aren't going to hire, they cut off all communication, total lot drop. Sometimes at their own campus, no feedback at all. It's really an angering experience imo. I mean, I get it from a litigious mindset, but still not very humane.

munchbunny 6y ago
That's not true, usually you'll get a message from the recruiter. You might not get interview feedback, but you'll know if you got turned down. Even if you don't, you submit applications through a recruiting site, and it tells you the current status of your application. It'll tell you if the application was rejected.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  Replying to myself, because the sibling comment is clearly at odds with what I'm saying, and I think that deserves to be addressed with more nuance than my first comment did. I think there's a lot of variation in the quality of your interview experience when you interview at Microsoft based on how on top of things the recruiter is, how much the hiring manager prioritizes candidate experience, and headcount/budget complexities. Some teams don't have recruiters, so then the candidate experience is whatever the hiring manager makes time for. I don't doubt the horror stories. For context, several years ago I applied for three different roles. I got rejected at the resume screen for one of them, rejected after the first phone interview for another, and I ended up taking an offer from the third. For both rejections, I got the news by email notification through Microsoft's careers app, not from the recruiter or from the hiring manager. I think it's a really impersonal way to find out after you've already done an interview round. The specific point I was making is that, contrary to the parent comment but not the sibling comment, there is a standard way of doing things that ends with following up with the candidate. And, as a candidate, you do have explicit ways of figuring out what happened to your application, even if finding out you failed an interview via an app is kind of shitty. It's definitely not standard to ghost the candidate.
- tracker1 6y ago
  I waited a week and a half with no reply/response from anyone... It was the third email a few weeks after that finally got a dismissive response. This was around 2004 iirc, not sure if it's changed significantly since, or when your experience is related or where/what you were interviewing for.

ahelwer 6y ago

Reminds me of: https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en https://twitter.com/mxcl/status/608682016205344768?lang=en How exactly could a PM interview process (which is just asking you to walk through a bunch of design scenarios) give a stronger hiring signal than having developed a product the company wanted to acqui-hire? Honestly somewhat insulting that they made him go through a full external interview loop. At most it should have been some informal chats of the sort you get when transferring teams internally.

ryandrake 6y ago
> Honestly somewhat insulting that they made him go through a full external interview loop. Wait, what? So if someone is a "name brand" celebrity, they should get to jump the queue and coast by with an "informal chat?" How is that fair? I don't care if I'm interviewing John Carmack, he's getting the same evaluation process I would give to any other senior candidate. Software Engineering's got enough problems with interviewing--it doesn't need an aristocracy that gets special treatment.
- ahelwer 6y ago
  Technical interviews aren't a hazing ritual that we should all suffer equally out of some misplaced idea of equality. They're just one way of informing the decision of whether to hire someone.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  I find it unlikely that even large companies put their superstar famous hires through the same hiring process.
  - defnotashton2 6y ago
    They don't for sure given a certain point. It is known. Have you ever heard of a formal interview process for execs.. No.
    - 6y ago

kayone 6y ago

I did, I've since updated the article at the end to note this, > There was an issue with my travel reimbursement, So I contacted the HR contact and at the same time asked about the Interviews, She told me someone will get back to me about that and they never did. This was on Feb 14th, 2020.

alpb 6y ago

He was talking about the money was discussed even before coming into the interviews. This makes me think if he was brought to a sham on-site interview in the first place.