Man, this hurt to read. Keivan’s response is the right one. But I wonder if the arrangements and outcome would have been different had AppGet been closed source.
> I wonder if the arrangements and outcome would have been different had AppGet been closed source.
All of the Windows apps that MS did this to back in the 1990s were closed source. Didn't help. MS has more than enough horsepower to just reverse engineer whatever they can't get the source code for if they care enough about the features.
Right. That was the point: it is not enough to just understand how something was made. You have to be able to recreate it too. And building a similar system in just a bit different way to avoid potential copyright or patent claims is hard. If the system is complex, it is hard squared.
> it is not enough to just understand how something was made. You have to be able to recreate it too
I meant to include both in "reverse engineering".
What I was trying to say was that the large products where MS has failed spectacularly don't seem to me to be products from some other company that they reverse engineered. They seem to me to be products MS thought up itself. MS is better at co-opting ideas invented by others than at inventing its own.
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.
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.
I think the reason this process was used is because if you are some random employee at Microsoft, you don't have the ability to just acquire a company. You probably don't even know who to look for to ask for such a thing. But what you can do is create a req for a position and refer someone you know for it.
I am guessing that the average "higher up" at Microsoft does not know what AppGet is, or even what the priorities for package management in Windows are. It's just not a high level strategy thing, it's a low level engineering thing.
> 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.
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.
That's absurd. What he has built literally demonstrates he has the ability that the role requires - which is entirely what the entire interview loop is trying to ascertain. If you can ascertain that a person has a skillset without that loop, it is completely unnecessary.
The point of an interview is to figure out the capabilities of a candidate. If they are already known, it makes most of the interview process pointless.
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.
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.
My experience while interviewing with MS is somewhat similar with respect to not hearing back after each stage. The initial phone interview was quick with what seemed like a lower level HR person who asked basic questions from a list with many mispronunciations of MS SQL technologies. I didn't hear anything for three weeks so I called them and they said, "Oh yeah. We want to schedule another phoner with the product team". A few days later I interviewed with for about an hour with two engineers and it was more inline with what I had expected. This time I sent an email the next day thanking them hoping that would at least keep me in the back of their minds. Same thing. About three weeks later I called to find out my status. "Oh yeah. We would like to fly you to Virginia for an in person interview this week". They set up my flight and hotel and I went through three interviews with different groups and left thinking, "Well that was horrible and embarrassing. They are way above anyone I had ever worked with". Same thing. Sent an email thanking them along with my expenses. About six weeks later I needed to know my status since funds were getting low. I called them up and was told I wasn't ready to work for them. But I should add them on LinkedIn to keep in touch. My self esteem was pretty shot, but I ended up with a pretty sweet job that week. I still get emails from them every once in a while when a position opens up, but three years later I still get a little anxious when those emails hit.
So yeah, their post interview stage communication seems to be the weakest part of a process I am sure I was one of hundreds going through at that time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is just not cricket from team Microsoft.