Agilent Technologies

Name: Khoa (4.14.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: R/D
Status: Invited to onsite interview (all expenses paid), declined interview
Application Process
Submit my resume online. 6
Comments
50 minutes technical phone interview. 14
A division in Colorado Springs. I heard it's beautiful there :).
Interview
Asked about Stack, Stack Frames, Heap, variable allocations and destructions. 1
Asked about Linked Lists.
Asked about Multi-Threading
Asked about Interrupts and exceptions.
Asked about Object Oriented Programming.
Asked about Binary Tree 2
More queestions but forgot.
Name: KHOA (2.4.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status:
Application Process
On campus interview.
Interview
What does the keyword volatile mean in C? 4
What's wrong with this code:
unsigned int i;
for (i = 100; i <= 0; --i)
printf("%d\n",i); 5
Describe in english what this code do?
( (n & (n-1)) == 0) 9
Write atoi(const char * chr) 6
Explain Virtual Memory. What is the TLB? 1
Count the number of ON bits in an integer. 3
Name: krammer (2.28.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Electronic Tools Measurement
Status: Invited to all day onsite interview
Application Process
Submit resume online or through college
Interview
What is the difference between an object and a class? 3
What is an abstract function?
What is a good OO design? 1
 What is polymorphism? 1
What is the difference between copy by value and copy by reference?
How does binary search work? What is its complexity? 1
What is an ideal data structure to traverse through in order to create a depth-first
spanning forrest?
What if you were given a project and couldnt finish it on time?
Write a program that traverses through a sentence and returns the words in
reverse order. 9

[top]

Amazon

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full time
Division: Mediatech and Personalization
Status: Received Offer
Application Process
Sent resume to recruiter via friend-of-friend 2
At Amazon, you apply for a very specific position in a specific group. You can see all
their openings on their website. 1
Two phone interviews with specific group who's interested 14
Third round interview in Seattle. All expenses paid.
Comments
At Amazon, you can bring their dogs to work 1
Mediatech is the group which does "Look within the book." Personalization does
things like "people who bought this book also bought..."
Shorter release cycles mean that you can experiment more with ideas and get to
work on more things 1
Interview
Most challenging project 2
Difference between class and object 10
Why would you use an array vs linked-list 11
How much experience do you have with unix
What sort of commenting standards do you use 1
Describe the classes and data structures you would use for a file system 18
What's the point of inheritance 4
Algorithm: You have 50,000 html files, some of which contain phone numbers. How
would you create a list of all the files which contain phone numbers? 8
What's the max insertion time for a hash table 7
What's the max look up time for a binary tree 18
Interview
Explain the classes and objects for a generic deck of cards that would be used in a
poker game 2

public interface I Ca rdextends Comparab le

{
public static final int SPADES = 0 ;
public static final int HEARTS = 1 ;
public static final int DIAMONDS = 2 ;
public static final int CLUBS = 3 ;
public int getSu i t ( ) ;
public int getRank ( ) ;
}
The interface specifies the behavior of a card without providing information
about how cards are
implemented. Once they know that getSu i t ( returns
) a value like
I Ca rd .HEARTS, and that
getRank ( )returns a value in the range of 1 (ace) to 13 (king), students can
write code from this
specification. For example, here's code to check whether an array of cards is
sorted. We don’t
know how it’s been sorted (e.g., do all the aces come before the twos or do
all the spades come
before the hearts?), but we can determine that an array is sorted.
1 Beginning

public class Deck implements I t e ra to r{

private ArrayL i s t myCardL i s t ;
private int myIndex ;
public Deck ( ){
myCardList = new Ar rayL i s t ( ) ;
for(int su i t = I Ca rd .SPADES ; su i t <= I Ca rd .CLUBS ; su i t++){
for (int rank = 1 ; rank <= 13 ; rank++){
myCardList.add(new Card (su i t , rank ) ) ;
}
}
shuffle();
}
private void shu f f l e ( ){
Collections.shuffle(myCardList);
myIndex = 0;
}
public boolean hasNext ( ) {
return myIndex < myCardL i s t . s i ze ( ) ;
}
public Objec t next ( ) {
ICard card = (ICard) myCardList.get(myIndex);
myIndex++;
return ca rd ;
}
public void remove( ) {
throw new Unsuppor tedOpera t i onExcept i on ( ) ;
}
}
Algorithm: Explain algorithm to shuffle cards 5
Coding: Write code to tokenize a string (had to explain code out loud and then
follow-up with the actual code in an email 1
If you had the entire text to 65 million books in a database, what would you do with
 it? 8
How much experience do you have with unix
From 1 - 10, rate c++, c, java, unix, sql skills
How would you implement a map (not a map of like a city... just a set of keys which
"map" to values")
- Give two data structures you could use
- What is average and worst case insert time, delete time, look up time
- What are pros/cons of each 5
Interview
7 servers running in parallel. What happens when you need to expand to 20 live?
What are issues? What could you do to fix this issue in the future? 1
Coding: How would you find the nth to last element in a linked list? 21
Coding: Jig saw puzzle. What are the data structures? Assume you have some
method which can tell you if two pieces fit together. How would you solve the
puzzle, minimizing the number of times you have to call that function? 7
You have a basket ball hoop and someone says that you can play 1 of 2 games. You
get $1000 and one shot to get the hoop. Or, you get three shots and you have to
make 2 of 3 shots. Which one do you choose? If p is the probability of making a
particular shot, what value of p makes you switch games? 16
Coding: You have an array of ints. How would you find the two elements that sum
to a particular value? 14
Coding: Implement a binary search in a sorted array 2
Coding: Implement a binary search in a sorted array
Coding: How would you reverse the words in a string? (ie, "the quick brown fox" --
> "fox brown quick the" 25
Offer
Offer from both Mediatech and Personalization
Base Salary: $X 4
Signing bonus: $X (you get half your first day, half after a year)
Stock: X shares (currently trading at $40) [4 year vesting schedule: 5% first year,
15% second year, 20% every six months after that]
Relocation:
- Temporary housing for one month
- 10,000 pounds of shipping is reimbursed
- $X cash when you start for miscellaneous stuff
Given 45 days to decide 17
Name: Programmer (4.8.2005)
Position: Software Design Engineer in QA
Job Type: Full Time
Division: QA
Status: Second Round Phone
Application Process
Recruiter Contcted after a few days to schedule a Phone Interview.
Interview
1. Tell me about yourself?

2. Talk about your favourite project? What part of a Software Project do u enjoy
most?
3. What is black box testing?
4. What do you include in a test plan?
 5. How would you detect a repeated element in an integer array. Discuss various
solutions and the order of the algorithm.

6. What is a tree? How do you traverse a tree? 5

7. Discuss the code of pre-order traversal?

8. What is a linked list? What are its advantages over arrays? 7

9. You have a website which has 5 reads on a database when it is loaded. Each read
takes 7 seconds for a total of 35 seconds, discuss how you could improve the
performance?

10. What Languages are you comfortable working on? 3

11. Discuss the important features of Object Oriented Programming

12. What is a Pure Function?

13. What is Polymorphism?

14. Why do you want to work at Amazon? 1

15. If you are already working why are you still looking?

16. Tell me about your work experiences in the past?

17. Do you have any questions ?

Thank you. Recruiter will contact you with further information.

Name: Saurav (7.25.2005)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Recommendations Team
Status: Rejected
Application Process
They flew me over to Seattle and had 5 rounds of interviews. Below are the
excerpts.
Interview
Design a graph class. Write the C++ interface for it.
Given two sets, Write a function to provide the union of them. STL not allowed to
be used.
Optimise for Time and space. 15
Write a function to find the no of set bits of an integer. Optimise. Ended up giving
two solutions . Could not implement the third one. 12
Say you have a system. The design is good. But performance is not good. How
would you find where the problem is? went on for about half an hour about it. 2
Some question about random sampling and buffer read. Don't remember exactly.
Had to do with calculating the probabilty and stuff.
Lunch was all about design patterns. He(2PTL)asked me about 5 patterns and
asked me y C++ and not JAVA.
Write a function to smooth out stock fluctuations. Asked me to layout the
mathematical idea for curve smoothing before writing code.
Design an algorithm to calculate the most user viewed pages , had some more
specs. Dnt quite remember.
Name: kunal chopra (11.3.2005)
Position: software test engineer
Job Type: full time
Division:
Status: still waiting.........
Application Process
applied through craig's list. got a call from recruiter.
Interview
asked some questions based on my previous job
Find missing element in an array of 100 elements. 6
say i give you a universal vegetable cutter which claims that it can cut any kind of
vegetable. TEST IT.
Interview
tell me abt ur background
write push and pop for stack
the "logging in" feature of amazon.com has a problem. isolate the problem.
say u are in charge of the "login" fature of amazon.com. TEST IT.
Interview
1. tell me about yourself. talked about amazon and testing in general at amazon
and my previous company.
2. given a binary tree, write code to check whether it is a binary search tree or not
9
Lunch - QA manager.

1. tell me a situation when u had to face problems and the requirements were not
clear. how did u handle the situation?

2. which is the best error you have caught?

3. which is the worst error u've ever caught?

4. asked about a project on my resume

some guy who was a neutral recreuiter

1. asked about my background.

2. do u have unix experience? have u heard of WC (word count). code it in c/c++.

can use STL
QA engineer.

1. asked about testing and automation in general. say u go the amazon.com

website and there is a problem with the address feature (CHANGE address). How
would u test it?

2. what data sets would u test it against?

3. how would u decide on such a data set?

4. say there is a problem with calculation of taxes on the amazon.com website. How
would u isolate the problem. once isolated and fixed. how would u go ahead and
test it?
QA engineer -
 1. say you have a calculator service running on a server. Automate the process of
testing it. i.e. by one click of a buttonu should be able to test it.

2. how would you do the same if you did not have access to the input and expected
output. for example. no excel sheet that has the expected values. generate the 2
inputs on the fly. now how would you automate the testing.

3. discuss data structures for NOTEPAD. discuss with reference to bufferer write.

Offer
i have emailed the recruiter, but they havent gotten back to me.....should i safely
assume that I have lost it? comments? 8
Name: divya (11.19.2005)
Position: SDE
Job Type: full time
Division: Ordering
Status: Received offer
Interview
generic questions on software development
exception handling, C++ basics, bitwise operations
code to shuffle a standard deck of cards
algo to find nth node from the end in a linked list
algo to find duplicates from an array - discuss different approaches 8
algo & code to serialize a binary tree, discuss various solutions 5
algo & code to find 2 numbers whose sum equals a given value 7
Name: DM (12.11.2005)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full time
Division:
Status:
Interview
Find Nth last element in a linked list 4
Print BST level by level 6
Given 2 files, each with names of thousands of customers who bought something
from Amazon.com on that particular day. Find the common customers (i.e. common
names in file1 and file2) 5
Check if binary representation of an int is a palindrome or not. 20
Test an ATM in a distributed banking system.
Name: SJ (12.14.2005)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Personalization
Status: Rejected
Application Process
Why do you want to work at Amazon?
Which project are you most proud of?
Describe the project you are currently working on
Difference between Hashtable and Binary tree? When would you use them?
Complexities of insertion, deletion
Algo to print a 2 dimensional array in a spiral clockwise manner?
e.g. A[3][4] =
 123
456
789
Print :
123698745 11
Complexity of the above algorithm. 1
Interview
How did you hear about Amazon?
Why do you want to work here?
What is an array? What is a Linked List, Map.
Complexity of insertion and deletion for linked list.
8 balls question. (Find heavy ball) 4
Given 3 files, each with names of thousands of customers who bought something
from Amazon.com on that particular day. Find the common customers (i.e. common
names in file1 and file2 and file3)
Modify this algorithm so that it takes less memory
What is the complexity of this algorithm
Favorite feature on Amazon personalization site
Who would you design this feature?
Name: ola (1.23.2006)
Position: Software Dev Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Unspecified
Status: 1st Screen
Application Process
Submitted via Monster
Comments
Interviewer was not exactly forthcoming with suggestions
Interview
Tell me what you are doing.
What is your stronger language (Java or C#)
Reverse a linked list 9
Count characters in a string, wanted to see a hashtable used. 5
count bits in an integer. Solved using mask, did not attempt -1 approach. 5
Write in java a method to parse an integer from a string 2
Any questions.
Name: other (1.30.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: N/A
Interview
Given an array of integers where every int has exactly one duplicate except one,
find the number with odd occuring number. 21
assume your computer is reading characters one by one from a stream (you don't
know the length of the stream before ending). Note that you have only one
character of storage space (so you cann't save the characters you've read to a
something like a strong). When you've finished reading you should return a
character out of the stream with equal probability. 11
 Determine is a graph is circular. 4
Name: ybh6336 (2.9.2006)
Position: Software Technology Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Awaiting result of phone interview 2
Application Process
Asked a lot of questions about my last project (it was a J2EE application).
You have an unsorted array of some million random positive integers with no
duplicates. Find two integers from this array which add up to 50. The guy was really
cool and gave me a lot of hints. 7
You have an unsorted array of integers with duplicate entries. How would you get
rid of all the duplicates. I started off by copying all the entries to a
HashTable/HashMap, by keeping a count of number of times I come across an
integer and copying over only count 1 integers over to an array. He then wanted me
to do it using absolutely no additional memory. I was stuck for a long time, and he
wanted me to co-relate this problem with stripping of duplicate characters from a
string. 7
What happens when you call the add() method on a Hashtable?
OOPS principles: Polymorphism (give a real world example); how would you choose
between an abstract class and interface; difference between method overloading
and method overriding
Interview
Unix: You have 50,000 html files in a UNIX directory structure, some of which
contain phone numbers in the format ***-***-****. How would you create a list of
all the files which contain phone numbers? (Assume that you already have the
regular expression) 5
Unix: You want to kill a process that has been running for a long time, how to do
that? 2
Java: Differentiate between final, finally and finalize
Java: Talk to me about the Java Collections API
Java: How does the synchronized keyword work? What happens when you use it on
a static method?
XML: How have you used XML in your previous projects?
XML: Differentiate between SAX and DOM. 1
Data Structures: Time complexities for HashTable, Linked List, Binary Search,
Array.
Algorithm: You have a tree (not Binary) and you want to print the values of all the
nodes in this tree level by level. Discussed on phone and asked me to email Java
code for my algorithm. 2
Name: dotNet (2.20.2006)
Position: Software Development Engineer
Job Type: Full time
Division:
Status:
Interview
The bigger the ratio between the size of the hash table and the number of data
elements, the less chance there is for collision. What is a drawback to making the
hash table big enough so the chances of collision is ignorable?
How could a linked list and a hash table be combined to allow someone to run
 through the list from item to item while still maintaining the ability to access an
individual element in O(1) time? 3
Given two log files, each with a billion usernames (each username appended to the
log file), find the usernames existing in both documents in the most efficient
manner? Use pseudo-code or code. If your code calls pre-existing library functions,
create each library function from scratch. 6
Name: bl (2.23.2006)
Position: No clue since they contact me first
Job Type:
Division: Multimedia & customer service support
Status: 3rd phone screen, waiting for feedback
Application Process
I posted my resume online, they contacted me 1
Comments
1st phone interview is very pleasant experience and it was conducted by a principle
engineer. 2nd didn't go well since i am a little bit nervous and also i am surprised
they were so obsessed with linklist reverse and sorting algorithms. I gave the
answer to reverse a linklist by call collections class. and they seemed want me to
give the answer by using the current class's method. After the phone interview, I
just found what did they mean but i guess it's too late. Then next day a recruiter
called me and told me they are going to arrange another phone interview today.
3rd interview is awful. I thought I screwed up...:(
Interview
more architectural view about solve problem capability. I think the intervier was
more realistic than the other two . Not just because he recommend to 2nd
interview, since I also have the experience with recuriting other employees in the
past. I felt the potenial is more than anything in work. Coding is just one thing ,
maybe the one who can solve the tricky algorithms is good in some way, but how
about the one who has been out of school for several years and I cant remeber
anything about mergesort or quicksort or how to find the shortest path blah blah.
But I do have the confidence I am very good at work. No matter where I go, I
found most people are not that smart and if you are willing to learn, you can be the
best. Of course, you must have the potenial first. Like you are willing to learn and
you like your job...
MultiThread, Garbage Collection. Tomcat distribute request(Java Spaces), http
protocal. Socket programming...
App server+DB server, solve the querying delay problem...
focus on my last project
2nd phone interview: reverse linklist(so stupid, I was too focus on the rule using
the exist library much better than build something new(Effctive Java) and when the
intervier insisted on asking me to give the non extra memory consuming answer, I
was stucked for a while then I told her to move on the next topic. Find the duplicate
number from an array. I gave the hash solving method.but I also gave her other
answers.
3rd phone interview
classpath package, RMI, vitual method difference between Java and C++, = and
== and equals() difference. What's the latest book I read. reverse vowels of string,
then read out and send him in memory. First I thought it's simple and I made a
mistake for the for-loops and then I send another version with a for and while loop.
I don't what 's gonna happend, but I have no regret if they don't want bring me on
site. I feel it's too much algorthms thing that I am not good at it anymore. and I
 don't want spend a lot time to review something you seldom get the chance to use
it in future.
Name: Kartik (2.24.2006)
Position: Software Design Intern
Job Type: Intern
Division:
Status:
Application Process
Gave a resume to recruiter at job fair, got interview.
Interview
Here is a graph of distribution centers and the weight to go from one to another.
How would you represent this using a data structure? Code an alogrithm that allows
me to check if there is a path from one node to another and what the weight of this
path is. 1
Multiply a number by 7 without the * operator. 5
I want to see if all the ones in a number appear on the right side of the number and
all zeros appear on the left, how can I do this most efficiently? (i.e. 00000111 is
true but 100010 is false) 4
Here is a tree. It's a binary tree but in no particular order. How do you write this
tree to a file so that it can be reread in an reconstructed exactly as shown? 26
I want to code the game of chess. What classes and objects and hiearchies would
you use and why?
Why do you want to work at Amazon?
What was your hardest techincal project?
What was the most interesting thing you have ever done (technical or non
technical) ?
Offer
In a week hopefully :)
Name: Nancy (2.27.2006)
Position: SD
Job Type: Full time
Division:
Status: n/a
Application Process
I was scheduled a phone interview today. However, the interviewer didnot contact
me. I've waited for several hours! I reached the HR person, who scheduled the
interview, finally. She did not know what happend but promised to find out. She
rescheduled me another time. I am wondering in what situation could an interview
forget an interview. If they don't want to know me more, they shouldn't schedule
the interview. If they changed their mind, they should inform me. 2
Name: sweety (3.24.2006)
Position: Support Engineer
Job Type: Full time
Division:
Status: Just attended the first phone interview
Application Process
first phone interview
Comments
this site has really helped me alot in preparing 5
gayle keep up the good work
Interview
database question like self joint with tables given by him
no.of 1 bits in a number ---program
to find a telephone number in dir and subdir (find command is the answer)
general questions
what do you like in a job 2
what you don't like in a job
gave some description about the job and then it is done
Name: AJ (4.24.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Application Process
applied through monster
Comments
Gayle, nice job, hats off to you for it
Interview
Print out a multiplication table, i wasnt told what kind of data structure it is, just
that it has 1*1=1, 1*2=2, ...... 200*200=40000, ..... values. 2
What is Polymorphism, how do virtual functions work
Design a deck of cards
When would a program crash in a buffer overrun case. Gave me,
buff[50];
for( int i=0; i <100; i++ )
buff[i] = 0;

What will happen to first 50 bytes assigned, when would the program crash
Given two dates, Design an algorithm to return whether the dates are exactly a
month apart, less than a month apart or more than a month apart.
Name: Peter (4.25.2006)
Position: Software Development
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Supply Chain
Status:
Application Process
Singleton Class implementation
Given void f1(string arg1, vector& arg2)
Write code so that "f1" prints all the anagrams of arg1 present in arg2 1
Modify the above code to weed out the duplicate anagrams
Write function to print all the anagrams of a given string 1
Differences between "new" and "malloc".
Name: Kiran (4.25.2006)
Position: General
Job Type: full time
Division:
Status:
Interview
Mailed me this code and asked to find the mistakes in the code
 class Base {
public:
Base(int numElements) {
m_baseArray = new int[numElements];
}
~Base { //non-virtual
delete [] m_baseArray;
}
private:
int* m_baseArray;
}
class Derived : public Base {
public:
Derived(int numElements) : Base(numElements) {
m_derivedArray = new int[numElements];
}
~Derived() {
delete[] m_derivedArray;
}
private:
int* m_derivedArray;
}
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
Base* base = new Derived(3);
delete base;
return 0;
}

What is wrong with the code ? 5

Name: cc (6.5.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Subscriptions
Status: First telephonic interview
Application Process
Told me what they do in the subscriptions division - Media ingestion group - They
collect data from different sources and put it into standard sellable format
Asked me about my line of work and projects
Write the code for fibonacci series - I first told a recursive algorithm - then he told if
i can try iterative - gave me 5 minutes to write it in the langnage of my choice -
then read the code out loud one word at a time to him (you read int main open
paranthesis void close paranthesis ....like that - it took me some time to get used to
that.
Do you have any questions - he asked me?
Finally I was told that the recruiter will get back to me in a few days time.
Good luck to everyone .... :-)
Name: N/A (6.7.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Self Service Integration team
Status: Rejected
Interview
array vs list
reverse linked list. Why don't you use recursion?
what kind og job do you prefer
int[1000], numbers from 1 to 1000, but one is missed - find it 2
Develop structure for storing sparce array. Implement multiplications of such
arrays.
Name: Little Bread (6.8.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: fulltime
Division:
Status:
Application Process
submitted resume directly to amazon
got a phone after 2 months, scheduled a phone interview the next day
Interview
Brainteaser: there is a bar with 25 seats in a line. The people there are anti-social
so when they walk in the bar, they always try to find a seat farthest away from
others. If one person walks in and find there is no seat are adjecent to nobody, that
person will walk away. The bar owner wants as many people as possible. The owner
can tell the first customer where to sit. all the other customers will pick the farthest
possible seat from others. So where should the first customer sit. 3
If there are two structs, TreeNode and Tree. TreeNode contains 3 elements, data,
lChild and rChile. Tree contains 2 elements, int size and TreeNode *root. The tree is
a complete tree. So how to find a O(logN) approach to insert a new node.
Java. final, finalize, finally
If there are a huge array of positive integers, all the integers show up twice except
one. Find out that integer.
Homework: Reverse all the words in a string.
Projects
why amazon
why cs
Name: justafix (8.4.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: FT
Division:
Status:
Application Process
Please let me know if process related (CMM, six sigma etc) related questions are
asked in Amazon QA interviews ? Please let me know asap.
Name: Little Bread (8.8.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: full time
Division:
Status: offer received
Application Process
sent resume thru monster 3 months ago 2
went thru 3 phone interviews with 2 groups 1 month ago
went onsite 3 weeks ago
phone interview questions are very scattered (algorithm, brain teaser, coding,
 database, design elevator system, research in school)
onsite is most about algorithm and coding.
one interesting onsite question: when (i<0)&&(-i<0) is true in Java
verbal offer intention 3 days after interview
verbal offer 1 week after interview
offer package: x base salary, x signon bonus, x restricted stock
good luck to everyone!
Name: Neil (1.28.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full time
Division:
Status: Received offer
Application Process
applied through an employee referral 1
Interview
How would you load test a web page without using any test tools 3
Lot of design questions and OOAD stuff 2
given two binary trees, find if they are similar or not 4
Programming questions asked were more or less same as the ones listed at this
site
Name: Muhariz Jabeer (5.24.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Fulfillment Management Systems (FMS)
Status: Pending
Application Process
Had 3 gruelling phone interviews and had to wait for over 1 month after the last
one to hear back from them.
Flying out to Seattle this Thursday for a Friday interview.
Comments
As Mentioned, the last phone interview went exceptionally well but they took over 1
month to get back to me. Maybe the guy went on holiday or something.
The phone interviews consisted of some good cs fundamentals being called for
The easy solution is never what they want
Difficult to talk code while your writing on the phone - kinda sucks. When i
complained, he said this is part of the test :(... i said that this was kinda unusual
for me coz i love to concentrate when i code not talk out loud while i type. It's a
different story talking about an algorithm out loud and talking out what your typing
out loud :(
Interview
Asked me to describe the difference between final, finally and finalize in java. (The
last one is tricky coz we rarely use it)
Define class and object
what does the word final do when put in front of a Collection (i liked this one - it
basically means you cannot ever nuke out the reference or change it to any other
Collection. But you can of course add and remove stuff from it)
Design a Deck of Cards
Write a method to shufle the deck. The constraint is it has to be a perfect shuffle -
in other words, every 52! permutations of the deck has to be equally like (given a
 completely random function which is theoretical of course).

I managed to do this with a simple for loop in O(n) time

int[] deck = new int[52];

for(int i=0; i<52; i++)
deck[i] = i;

Random r = new Random();

for(int i=0; i
int ran = r.nextInt(deck.length-i) + i;
int temp = deck[i];
deck[i] = deck[ran];
deck[ran] = temp;
}
When i wasn't certain whether my random function generated with equal probability
all permutations, the interviewer asked me to write a formal proof that it works or
not and send it to him (really strange).

Proved it with the following and he bought it:

Probabilisticly
card 1 has 52 positions it can fit in
card 2 has 51
card 3 has 50
so on and so forth
card 52 has 1 position to fit in

hence its 52 x 51 x 50 x ... x 1 = 52! can be generated using this shuffle.

Oblivious to me, aparantly this kind of shuffle is used a lot in online card games.
Silly me :P
Interview
Discussed the proof and solution to my card shuffle problem
Asked me to reverse a Linked list without re-creating a new one. I did it recursively
going all the way to end and linking it backwards after the recursive call. Had to
pass in two nodes though, one previous and one current. He said he likes iteration
better becoz its more resource friendly :)
Asked me to take some time around 1 hour and create an API that could read
names,emp ID's,phone numbers, office names in that order from a file and stores
them and has the following functionality:

1) getEmployeeById
2) getEmployeeByName
3) getEmployeesByName
4) editEmployeeInfoById
5) editEmployeeInfoByName
I took around 2 hours to do a good job for this becoz he wanted propper OO
concepts. Created the util class as a singleton with synchronization for the add and
edit methods with exceptions being thrown when employee's arent found etc. He
seemed to like it from the reply mail i received
Interview
 Asked me the differnce between using Abstract class vs interface on a real world
problem im working on (at one point he settled for an answer where is said "it's
just intuitively wrong" - however, he tried to trick me into justifying using the wrong
thing, I had to say that there is no justification for using this technique here, took a
little bit of guts but he liked it)
The hardest question to date on a phone interview. he asked me to take 2 hours
and write the following API.

Create an LRU Cache that caches some key/value pair and kicks out the Least
Recently Used when you run out of space. Wanted run times and asked me to
comment on how good my implementation is and whether its good for industry
level usage.
I managed to do both Lookup and LRU Eviction in O(1) by creating a hybrid
datastructure for the application. Combined a Hashtable and a LinkedList. The
hashtable would be used for constant time lookup, when something is lookedup it is
enqued to the front of the linked list. (the hastable had an object that stored the
value and a reference to a LinkListNode).

And when I ran out of predifined room in the hastable, i kicked out the least
recently used by dequeing the tail of the linked list, and kicking out the
corresponding key/value pair from the hastable.

I also made the hashtable 2 times the capacity of the size of the LRU cap so that
we would hopefully never have to grow the hastable as the critical load factor would
never be aproached
The standard stuff had to be added to the api like synchronization, singleton etc.

Interview
its coming up soon, hopefully ill do good :D
Name: Kiran (6.12.2006)
Position: Software Development Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Waiting...
Application Process
How would you declare a class such that one and only one instance of that class
can be created? 5
Detect whether a list is circular or not?
How would give an estimate for a client who wants to know the cost of cleaning all
the windows of all the building in Seattle?
Interview
Algorithm and code to detect occurence of a string(patterns) in another string ex:
aab, aababa 2
OO design related question? How would you design a class structure for animals in
a zoo
Difference between class and object?
What are thread, why are they used in programming?
Difference between polmorphism and inheritance?
Offer
Code reverse of a string?
OOP design related.. Given Vehical base class which have a move() method, car
 and jet subclasses both with a overridden move(). Design JetCar class amd move()
without having to code much? (using the Jet class and Car class overridden
methods)
Name: abc (3.28.2006)
Position:
Job Type:
Division:
Status:
Interview
find dup number for n+1 numbers from 1...n 1
Name: AP (4.16.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Fulfillment Management Systems
Status: Received
Application Process
Had 2 phone screens with the same team .. started way back in mid-November ..
My advice would be to follow up with them asap especially for the phone screen as
it might take a while for them to get back to you. All expenses paid onsite visit to
the beautiful city of Seattle.
Interview
Phone Screen 1: Serialize and deserialize a binary tree/graph
General Unix questions
C++ questions
Design classes to represent a deck of cards
Phone Screen 2: Check whether the bit representation of integer is a palindrome

Multithreading and operating system stuff 1

Onsite: Had 5 rounds of interviews (1 hour each) ..
Find Mth to last node in a linked list
Delete a node in circular linked list
Count leaves/total nodes in binary tree
Design a parking garage
Given an outline for an architectural plan, automate the loading of the
design into a computer
Hash table load factor/optimisation questions
Balanced binary tree/heap
Design patterns
Unix level commands (mostly grep, cut, ps ) and theory questions
Find the 100 shortest distances to stars in the universe
Database related questions on stored procedures 1
Name: sweety (5.2.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: full time
Division:
Status:
Interview
Given a deck of nCards unique cards, cut the deck iCut cards from top and perform
a perfect shuffle. A perfect shuffle begins by putting down the bottom card from the
top portion of the deck followed by the bottom card from the bottom portion of the
deck followed by the next card from the top portion, etc., alternating cards until one
portion is used up. The remaining cards go on top. The problem is to find the
 number of perfect shuffles required to return the deck to its original order. Your
function should be declared as:

static long shuffles(int nCards,int iCut); 1

can someone solve and explain me the problem plzzz 1
Name: MM (6.29.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Fulltime
Division: Prime
Status: rejected
Interview
Asked to code the 'floodFill' method used by graphic products like Paint. 2

[top]

Apple

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: iChat AV
Status: Accepted offer for internship
Application Process
You can apply via Apple jobs site for specific openings. Apple tends not to start
looking for full time hires until the spring. When you submit your resume
electronically, nothing will happen. You have better luck if you individually email
people (when an email address is provided on the jobs site... that's how I applied).

Two phone interviews

Comments
Apple looks for developers who can also do design (if you're looking at a group
which has a GUI).
The work environment is roughly the same at Apple and at Microsoft... Although
there's a little more pressure at apple. Apple doesn't pay as well though, but I
actually like working there more because (a) I like being able to do the design stuff;
(b) the group are much smaller, so you have more impact.
My internship was great. Interns are treated like full time employees and my code
will ship.
Interview
Don't remember the questions very well (it was a long time ago)... there were
questions about experience
What do you think iChat could improve
Name: Khoa (4.13.2005)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Java Team
Status: Pendin
Application Process
Submit my resume online. Contrary to Gayle's belief, I did get an interview through
 the website.
Comments
The position is a QA position in the Java VM Team.
50 minutes technical interview.
Interview
Talked about Garbage Collector. Explained Mark & Sweep Algorithm.
Explained OOP concepts and why they're important.
Talked about Threading in Java.
Some data structures.
There were more questions but I forgot.
Name: Khoa (4.28.2005)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Automator
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submit my resume online.
Comments
All behavior questions.
Interview
Tell me about yourself, your coursework.
Your favorite class and professor.
What did you learn on your previous internships.
How do you go about learning a new language?
What are some languages that you're proficient at?
Any questions?

[top]

Athena Health

Name: Tim (5.30.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: None
Application Process
Asked to answer this question....
You and a friend are about to eat a pizza. You know that it always takes you x
seconds to eat a unit of pizza, and you know it takes your friend y seconds. Once
the pizza is cut, you will both start eating at the same time. Each person can eat
only one slice at a time. You cannot touch the next piece until you finish the one
you're eating. Out of generosity, you have agreed in advance to allow your friend to
have the last slice if you should both happen to reach for it at the same time.
Assuming that you would like as much of the pizza as possible to end up in your
stomach, into how many equal-sized slices should you cut the pizza?

...I'm not sure of my answer, any ideas? 6

 [top]

Bank of America

Name: Chandan (2.11.2006)

Position: Technology Intern
Job Type: Intern
Division: Bank Am. Securities
Status: Invited to interview on-campus, declined interview
Application Process
Applied via the university MonsterTrak web portal.
First round interview on-campus.
The second round interview is usually held on-campus.
Comments
Interns are posted at NYC.
I just wasn't interested in spending three months in NYC. My attitude is more suited
for the west-coast type of lifestyle.
Interview
The usual HR questions - tell me something about yourself, why Bank Am?, where
do you see yourself two/five years down the line?
Asked a couple of questions about sorting algorithms, time and space complexity.

Asked a few questions about my current research.

[top]

Bloomberg LP

Name: Khoa (12.20.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted my resume through their website 1
Comments
The engineers told me that they are well paid, but Bloomberg is in the middle of
Manhattan.
Work on small and medium projects. High pressure environment.
Interview
What is difference between Java and C++. 2
Implement a Garbage Collector for C++. 3
OOP questions in C++. One question I was stumped on for 30 seconds was, how
does the compiler know which virtual table to point to when the base class pointer
points to its derided class object. 9
What's the difference between Linked List and ArrayList? 1
Asked me basic unix commands (wc, grep, ls, ps, top, find) and which unix text
 editor I use.
Why is Virtual Memory important? 1
Name: khoa (1.5.2006)
Position: software engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: received offer
Application Process
2nd round. Interview with a managger. 7
1st round interview was harder. The interview questions overlap.
Interview
Why do I want to work for Bloomberg? 2
Favorite project?
Asked about unix commands
What's the difference between malloc and calloc? What's static methtod in C? 3
Discussed OOP concepts and gave examples.
Describe a binary tree, its properties, and name all of its traversal algorithms. 1
Asked me about XML. XML was on my resume but I don't know much about it. I
only have used it a few times. Note to self - take anything that I don't know too
well about off my resume.
Name: Srihari (1.12.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Interview
What is the command in perl to remove leading and trailing whitespace ?
Ans: Chomp 3
Is FORTRAN pass by value or pass by reference.
Ans: parameter in FORTRAN are passed by reference
What is deep copy in C++ ? When would you use it ?
You will use deep copy when you have dynamically allocated members in a class.
Do not forget to mention that you need a corresponding destructor to deallocate.
Please refer to this page for more info.
What did you use to connect perl to database ?
Ans: Perl DBI/DBD or ODBC Manager/ODBC Driver.
The ODBC Manager is analogous to the DBI (Database Interface); an ODBC Driver
is similar to a DBD (Database Driver).
Puzzle: You've got an 8×8 checkerboard and a bunch of dominoes that each fit
nicely on two squares of the checkboard. You can easily tile the entire checkerboard
with these dominoes. Now say that you remove two squares, one at one corner and
the other at the opposite corner. You're left with 62 squares. Can you tile this with
the dominoes? If so, show how. If not, prove why not. 1
Name: cd (4.20.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer
Job Type: Fulltime Entry
Division:
Status:
Application Process
Sent through school's career service website
Comments
Was told the interview would last 45 min, then when it was over, my phone showed
only 27 min. I believe I answered all the technical questions correctly. But the
problem is they didn't ask too many technical questions. For C++, they hardly
touched anything about it. Most questions were related to C.
OK, I WAS asked that infamous "why do you want to work for bloomberg. you like
money?" question. I don't know how these kinds of interviewers got hired there. I
had an urge to ask him what was your answer and thought when you were asked
this question and had to spend some effort controlling my tongue. 6
Sometimes I can't understand what the interviewer is asking. He had a heavy
indian accent. It was funny when I begged his pardon after several times, a clear
american voice would pop up repeating the question.
Interview
malloc and calloc
void type pointer, pointer arithmetic
given char arr[100]. what is strlen(arr) and what would printf("%s", arr) do? 2
data structures: to sort some elements, what data structure would u choose? would
u choose hashtable, why not? blahblah
how would u implement C++ in C.
one person can finish painting a house in 6 days, another in 4 days. if they work
together, how long would it take to finish painting? 5
basic c++ oo questions
Name: Sach (Sachin) (4.22.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Received Offer
Application Process
Had two telephonic interviews before a final onsite interview 5
Interview
1st Phone interview
--------------------

1) Difference between application interface and programming interface.

2) Virtual functions. How does a compiler know which function to use(virtual funtion
table)
3) QUestions on object oriented programming.
4) QUestions on projects etc...
5) Difference between const pointer and pointer to const.
2nd Phone Interview
--------------------

Interviewed with two people.(Tons of questions..lasted around one hour)

1) Questions on my project. I had implemented a peer to peer to distributed file
sharing system using Pthreads.
WHat is a thread. What resources are allocated to a thread. How does
syncrhornization work( explained how mutex locks work).
Explain test and set lock instruction.

2) Questions on virtual function, virtual table.

3) How much memory will the following code take.

void example
{
int bytes;
virtual functionName{ };
}

4) For a balanced binary search tree find the number of leaf nodes for a tree with
depth 10.

5) What is a void pointer. How will you convert this pointer to an integer pointer.
5
Onsite interview (all expenses paid)
-------------------------------------

1st interview (interviewed by two people) lasted about 1 and 1/2 hrs.
1) Several questions on projects....
2) Program to detect a palindrome.
3) 8 ball balance puzzle in PIE.
4) Imagine you have a listing of student names and marks. Give the best data
structure to store the same. Now imagine that you have range of student names
starting from a to l, m to z. Use a data structure for such a layout.
5) Was given two pages of code. Was asked the output. (The code contained static
and global variables in different functions being caaled from main() plus some
printf("%d") statements which should print garbage values).
6) Asked about different CPU scheduling algorithms.
2nd interview with HR

TYpical hr questions..why bloomberg...why computer science...etc...etc...

3rd interview with the manager....pretty senior guy who had been working since 12
years
This guy didtnt smile at all.....was trying to make me as comfortable as possible.

1) find the sqrt of a number without using any library functions.

2) How can you acheive polymorphism in C.
3) Gave me a piece of code...which is as follows...

Class A
{
int x;
}

Class B
{
int y;
}

Class C : public A, B
{
int z;
 }

A *aa;
B *bb;
C cc;

aa = &c;
bb = &c;

Tell me do aa and bb point to the same address? If yes or no....why? 4

Name: Deepa (4.25.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: On-site and then turned down
Application Process
static in C vs static in C++ .. and some other regular C++ questions 1
write code for strcpy, strlen .. (other string class functionalities)..
write code to reverse words in a string
write code to balance a binary tree
database schema design for a class scheduler application
OOP concepts, virtual tables in detail, memory management in C
Unix stuff on shell.. other commands
Name: Deepa (4.25.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: On-site and then turned down
Application Process
static in C vs static in C++ .. and some other regular C++ questions
write code for strcpy, strlen .. (other string class functionalities)..
write code to reverse words in a string
write code to balance a binary tree
database schema design for a class scheduler application
OOP concepts, virtual tables in detail, memory management in C
Unix stuff on shell.. other commands
Name: NA (5.23.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Application Process
On-campus interview
Phone interview
Lunch & On-site interview 1
Comments
This company sounds like a sham. They egregiously overcharge for access to a
bunch of lousy terminals and have money to spare to throw at completely useless
little features for it - with who knows how many man-hours wasted. A little
competition should turn things upside down real fast.
 My interview host lied through this teeth to me about a couple of things. He first
said he spends 80-90% of his work hours doing actual development and the
remaining time on maintenance. But as he described his job after that, he said he
spends a lot of time maintaining legacy FORTRAN code. It became more apparent
that he wasnt too happy about his job, but probably couldn't hope to do any better
due to his poor English skills.
He then said they make $10 billion in yearly revenue, but when he told me how
many terminals are in service and how many paying clients they have, the revenue
would be off by a factor of ten. I don't even know why he bothered making these
figures up. What does their annual revenue have to do with me? Was he testing my
ability to calculate, or worried that I calculated it at all?
They constantly try to check if you're just greedy (which makes me think about the
people who already work there). Even though I made it clear to them that I'm not
concerned about the salary and would gladly accept a lower rate and fewer "perks"
(as they called them), they kept bringing it up. I made it clear that my primary
interest was to learn as much as possible, with a secondary interest to be part of
something and to be as much of an asset to the organization as possible. I usually
make an offer to smaller companies where I agree to work without benefits or pay
for 3 months with a default "cancellation" at the end, unless they find value in my
employment. But I didn't bother telling these people about, since they seemed like
such money-hungry skeptics and probably couldn't handle such an agreement
anyway.
If you're an intelligent, self-driven person, don't bother with these arrogant snobs.
They'll treat you like you're useless. 1
Interview
Remove a fixed character from a C-string
Write simple state machine code in C
Asked about virtual functions, etc.
The questions were so easy, it was hard to tell if they were joking or if they had a
trick up their sleeves.
Wasn't asked anything nearly as challenging as I was expecting, yet they managed
to create an environment to get me nervous enough to fumble some things
regardless.
Name: Kiran (7.7.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Application Process
I've received an email for a 45 minutes phone interview with Bloomberg. I'd really
really appreciate if folks can share the questions and their experiences in this
regard.
Name: Alfy (7.31.2006)
Position: Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Fixed Income Trading / Trade book
Status: Not Selected
Comments
Well,interview went on for 50 mins or so but questions were not that good or
impressive they were all very basic questions. After the results came out i felt like
they are fun by wasting my time. Will never again think about Bloomberg ever in
 my life.The funny part was i answered all their questions and was very positive. But
the results turned out to be negative. Total waste of time for this POS company.
Interview
C and C++

1) Whats the difference between a pointer and a reference variable ??

2) whats a copy constructor ? Usage. Diff between shallow and deep copy.
why the significance of ambersand in the copy constructor ? what will happen if
there is no ambersand ?
3) What are memory leaks ? what tools you have used ?
4) Whats the size of integer, double - basic questions ?
5) How will you determine the size of an variable without using sizeof operator ?
Ans: Basically get the difference on the pointer address for the current and the
incremented position and storing the difference on data type ptrdiff_t.
6) whats the difference between malloc and calloc ?
7) whats the difference between new and malloc ?
8) whats a virtual function ?
9) whats a virtual destructor ? some questions based on that
10) A Dumb question : whats the size of a empty class
class { }
I simply did not understand the basis of this question. Come on i have also worked
in this technology for so many years and have used extensively. why would some
one do that or ask such a question.
My Ans: I dont know
Q: what if the class has one empty function ? what would be its size ?
My Ans : Size would be incremented by 4 bytes on a 32 bit system than the
previous size.
Q: what if the function is made virtual ? what would be its size ?
My Ans : Class Size would be the same. 3
11)Inline function
12)Cast data types in c++

Various lot of simple basic questions.

Unix:

Basic questions about fork and debugging a child process

How will you get a process listing in a unix box. basically the shell command with
options. More questions on various options like getting the process list for a user.
Unix command to a kill a process ?
Whats a defunct process ?
How to kill all child processes of a particular parent ?
Name: Jeff K (1.28.2006)
Position: Software Developer
Job Type: Full time
Division: N/A
Status: Rejected
Application Process
Submitted online through school.
On campus interview. 1
Comments
1st round. Interviewed with two arrogant programmers. 5
 They made sure you knew that they were well paid.
Interview
These guys thought they were the best thing ever because they got paid bank and
lived in Manhattan. (But they live in Manhattan so it's not really as much as you'd
think...) 3
Stress interview. They would interrupt each other and force me to answer questions
that the other one had interrupted me on.
Everything I said they responded "Are you sure?", "Are you sure about that?" 1
Sort of lame questions like:
What will this do? int main(){

return main;

How much memory will it use each call? (Depends on compiler optimization or not)
15
Remove characters from a string. What is the running time of your algorithm? Can
you do better? 1
While writing the code, they would question it and laugh, trying to trip you up, even
when you were right. Supposedly to see how you handle under pressure I guess.

Offer
I wouldn't have worked here if I got an offer, but I guess I don't have to worry
about that thank goodness! 3
Name: Parag (2.24.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Invited to onsite interview (all expenses paid)
Comments
Interviewed by two persons 3
Interview
Seems to me interviewer studied my projects really well and asked about every
projects listed on my resume in detail.
Asked some basic questions about C++?
Difference between malloc and new.
What is reference in C++? Where will you the use it? 1
Difference between reference and pointers? How can reference go bad? 2
Asked about virtual functions and function pointers?
Some questions about STL? How can one store different type of objects in vectors
or list?
What is auto pointer in C++? 5
Name: Karthik Srinivasan (4.17.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer (Entry Level)
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Reject
Comments
PS NOTE: If pointer's is ur weekpoint, don't even dream of taking the interview...
 These guys focus on Pointers and Arrays..
The Interview is for 45Mins telephonic.. 8
Interview
Interviewer> What's the differnce between C# and Java?
My Answere> C# can overload operators but Java cannot and Java is platform
independent and C# is not. 1
Interviewer> What's the differnce between C# and C++?
My Answere> C# code does not require header files..C# does not have multiple
inheritance...
Interviewer>If there are variable defined where the variable stored in the memory?

My Answere> All temporary variable are stored in Stack.

Interviewer> What if the variable is Global Variable, then where it's stored in
memory?
My Answere> In the stack again.. 1
Interviewer>What is a stack? What operation does it do? (Well he asked me this
question b'cos i answered the variables are

stored in Stack)
My Answere> Stack is a storage location with push and pop operations..
Interviewer> Since STACK does push and pop, so what if the stack pop's the Global
variable?
My Answere> Variables are poped only if it's out of scope..
(My answere was wrong....he said that the Global variables are not stored in
Stack!!)
Interviewer> What was the most challenging project ever done? Why?
My Answere> Blah...Blah... (We discussed for nearly 10 Mins...these guys know we
are talking abt)
Interviewer> What is a delegate in C#?
My Answere> They are reference types which performs indirect calls to methods
...blah...
Interviewer> What is a event and how is it related with delegates?
My Answere> Blah....blah..
Interviewer>What's the difference between Events calling delagates in C# and
Pointer calling a function in C++?
My Answere> !! No Idea....Silent !!...
Interview
Interviewer>Does delegates have performance improvements or any advantages
over functions calling in c++?
My Answere> ...No Idea .. 5
Interviewer>Let us assume there is variable size (size cannot be determined) of
string data coming over a network how will u

declare a char to display the string?

My Answere>Would use a pointer char rather than a fixed char like "char a[50];"..

Interviewer>Assuming that 5000 bytes of string data is in buffer, how would u

define the pointer?
My Answere>Dynamic allocation...blah...blah..
Interviewer>How would u intialize a pointer?
My Answere>new and malloc
 Interviewer>What is the syntax for mallac?
My Answere>blah..blah..
Interviewer>What's a template?
My Answere>blah...the answere was not that impresive...he asked a million
questions on that...what if this , what if that...i

don;t remember..
Interviewer>Assume that we have a string being passed to a function with a char
pointer, write a pgm to reverse the string?
My Answere> blah...blah..
Interviewer>How do u copy the reversed string into another variable i.e. if we have
'hello' the other variable should have

'olleh'?
My Answere>Well I just gave an idea on how to get it woking and he bombared me
with questions such as "how can determine the

size of the pointer...give a C implementation not C++!!"

Name: Karthik Srinivasan (4.17.2006)
Position: Financial Software Developer (Entry Level)
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Reject
Comments
PS NOTE: If pointer's is ur weekpoint, don't even dream of taking the interview...

These guys focus on Pointers and Arrays..

The Interview is for 45Mins telephonic..
Interview
Interviewer> What's the differnce between C# and Java?
My Answere> C# can overload operators but Java cannot and Java is platform
independent and C# is not.
Interviewer> What's the differnce between C# and C++?
My Answere> C# code does not require header files..C# does not have multiple
inheritance...
Interviewer>If there are variable defined where the variable stored in the memory?

My Answere> All temporary variable are stored in Stack.

Interviewer> What if the variable is Global Variable, then where it's stored in
memory?
My Answere> In the stack again..
Interviewer>What is a stack? What operation does it do? (Well he asked me this
question b'cos i answered the variables are

stored in Stack)
My Answere> Stack is a storage location with push and pop operations..
Interviewer> Since STACK does push and pop, so what if the stack pop's the Global
variable?
My Answere> Variables are poped only if it's out of scope..
(My answere was wrong....he said that the Global variables are not stored in
Stack!!)
 Interviewer> What was the most challenging project ever done? Why?
My Answere> Blah...Blah... (We discussed for nearly 10 Mins...these guys know we
are talking abt)
Interviewer> What is a delegate in C#?
My Answere> They are reference types which performs indirect calls to methods
...blah...
Interviewer> What is a event and how is it related with delegates?
My Answere> Blah....blah..
Interviewer>What's the difference between Events calling delagates in C# and
Pointer calling a function in C++?
My Answere> !! No Idea....Silent !!...
Interview
Interviewer>Does delegates have performance improvements or any advantages
over functions calling in c++?
My Answere> ...No Idea ..
Interviewer>Let us assume there is variable size (size cannot be determined) of
string data coming over a network how will u

declare a char to display the string?

My Answere>Would use a pointer char rather than a fixed char like "char a[50];"..

Interviewer>Assuming that 5000 bytes of string data is in buffer, how would u

define the pointer?
My Answere>Dynamic allocation...blah...blah..
Interviewer>How would u intialize a pointer?
My Answere>new and malloc
Interviewer>What is the syntax for mallac?
My Answere>blah..blah..
Interviewer>What's a template?
My Answere>blah...the answere was not that impresive...he asked a million
questions on that...what if this , what if that...i

don;t remember..
Interviewer>Assume that we have a string being passed to a function with a char
pointer, write a pgm to reverse the string?
My Answere> blah...blah..
Interviewer>How do u copy the reversed string into another variable i.e. if we have
'hello' the other variable should have

'olleh'?
My Answere>Well I just gave an idea on how to get it woking and he bombared me
with questions such as "how can determine the

size of the pointer...give a C implementation not C++!!"

Name: (5.4.2006)
Position: c++
Job Type:
Division:
Status:
Application Process
how would you separate the interface with implementation layers?
 (Don't know hot to answer, too big topic) 5

[top]

Bocada

Name: (7.28.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: Full time
Division:
Status: rejected
Application Process
This is a small company in downtown Bellevue that does data storage and
protection software.
I was contacted without having applied, had first interview/screen on UW campus.

On site four hour interview with four different people.

Comments
I came to the on-site interview and they were not ready for me, very disorganized
and confused.
In the middle of the interview developer #2 had a phone call. He proceeded to pick
up and started talking as if I wasn't even there. It turns out that the call was
something regarding his cat. This was so obnoxious and rude.
Product manager asked about networking in depth. Had he looked at my resume he
would have known that I do not claim to know networking. I told him this as well
but he appeared to enjoy the sadistic questioning session.
Somebody had a dog running around the office.
Interview
On campus interview: Was asked to explain boxing in .NET, the difference between
C and C++ and other knowledge based questions.
Interview #1 Developer spent time asking about previous experience. This was a
BS session.
Interview #2 Developer C++ questions. Gave me about five C++ code examples
and asked me to find bugs in them. After this asked to give me an algorithm to
shuffle a deck of cards, given that the cards are stored in an array of ints.
Interview #3 Product Manager Asked a variety of knowledge based questions about
networking and my skills.
Interview #4 Chief Technology Officer Another BS session. Why do you want to
work for us? Description of what they do, how much money do you expect...

[top]

Boeing

Name: Khoa (4.13.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submit my resume online. 1
Comments
Mainly behavioral questions!
Interview
Tell me a time where you showed your leadership skills
How do you keep your team motivated?
A time when you resolved conflicts between team members.
Where do you see youself in 5 years? 2
Your hardest class.
A time where you showed initiative.

[top]

Broadcom

Name: Arvind (5.24.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Invited to On-Site Interview
Application Process
I have my on-site interview for an entry-level Software Engineer position. Linux
device drivers, Microprocessors, C programming are some of the requirements.
Anybody has any interview experiences with broadcom?

[top]

CapitalIQ

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Software Developer
Job Type: Full time
Division:
Status: Received Offer, declined
Application Process
Applied via PennLink
Contacted to fill out questionair
First round interview in NYC. Had to take "quiz". Interview trip is not paid for
Second round interview in NYC. Not paid.
Comments
Capital IQ creates web-applications and are (I believe) profitable. They have some
sort of web application which people (banks / financial people) can overlay their
 own data with Capital IQ's.
Just bought out by S&P (Standard and Poor)
Still have "small company" feel. Retaining their own identity... seems like more of a
merger in name
About ~100 employees. ~30 developers
Employees work long hours.
A lot of penn grads there
Developers do most of the design and testing
Capital IQ does not pay for your ticket up. But, they’re pretty flexible about when to
interview so you piggy-back it on another interview (I piggy backed it on Goldman
Sachs).
Interview
Please describe in detail your SQL Server experience over the last 2 years. Please
describe in detail your tasks, projects, backup/restore, data feeds, replication,
performance monitoring, upgrades, etc. What did you like to do best?
If you were integrating a feed of end of day stock price information (open, high,
low, and closing price) for 5,000 companies, how would you do it? You are
responsible for the development, rollout and ongoing monitoring and maintenance
of the feed. Describe the different methods you considered and why you would
recommend your approach. The feed would be delivered once per trading day in a
comma-separated format via an FTP site. The feed will be used by 1000 daily users
in a web application. 6
What type of team environment do you like to work in? How are you most
effective?
What do you like to do in your spare time?
Interview
2 interviewers
Most challenging project
Coding: Basic sql queries
Written quiz. 40 min. (left room)
- draw a entity-relationship diagram for a database with companies, people, and
professionals (people who work for companies)
- Coding: write code in any language to check if a string is a palindrome
- steps in a technical design document
Interview
2 interviews - CTO and one of the founders
What did you learn from apple
What did you learn from microsoft
What part of the software development process do you like most
Why kind of company are you looking for
Tell me about one of your projects
Offer
$X / year (can't go any higher - said it was highest they've ever offered anyone
starting, but they were impressed with my experience)
Bonus: X - X% of salary
2 weeks vacation + 4 personal days. Benefits per www.benefitsplanner.com
Want decision within a month, but are flexible 3
Name: Reggie (1.30.2006)
Position: Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Offer
Application Process
Submitted online through school link.
Had a one hour, on campus interview.
Flew up to New York for an onsite interview.
Comments
CapitalIQ is a very casual, cool work environment. They are really laid back.
They are part of S & P now, but the Capital IQ people don't dress in suits, etc like
the S & P folks. Still, I would wear a suit to the interview.
Capital IQ must also have more money now that they are part of S & P. They paid
for my flight up there and back and my cab expenses, lunch, etc.
Employees definitely work long hours to get ahead but I think it doesn't take that
long to get ahead.
They are a small company within S & P so you still can get promoted within Capital
IQ I think.
Interview
The same test as Gayle's. But they may change that test (according to one of the
manager's) but expect similar questions.
Write an object(class), called StockCache, that caches a single stock every couple
of minutes. What are the function prototypes? Where would you need to put in
thread protection? How would you organize the set of StockCache objects?
Entity-relationship diagram (see Gayle's post).
Determine if a string is a palindrome. (Remember to think about spaces and capital
letters).
Describe a project you worked on... He wanted me to draw the whole thing out on
paper in graphical form.
What are some of the challenges you have faced when working with a team?
What do you do if a member of a team does not work as hard as the others?
Interview
Introduction of the product.
2 interviews. Interview with the CTO and the Software Architect.
CTO: Tell me what kind of position you are looking for?
CTO: What is your favorite project? Project challenges? What is your leadership
style?
Software Architect: Tell me about your projects?
Software Architect: He went over the quiz/test that I had done and asked me a
couple of questions on how I could improve certain algorithms, add thread
protection, etc.
Offer
X / year.
X% of salary bonus per year.
Same benefits package.
Signing bonus.

[top]
CGI-AMS

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Consultant (Software Development)
Job Type: Full time
Division:
Status: Invited to interview in VA, declined interview
Application Process
Applied via PennLink
Interview on Penn campus
All expenses paid trip to Fairfax, VA
Comments
Just merged... pretty large company now
Interview
Tell me about what you did at apple
Tell me about a team project - what was your role?
What do you want to be in consulting
Tell me about a leadership position you've had - what was challenging about it?
Tell me about something (course, etc) that was especially difficult (aka, what are
your weaknesses)

[top]

Chicago Mercantile Exchange

Name: Jack (4.4.2006)

Position: Java Developer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Clearing
Status: Pending
Interview
Interview with Sys Analyst and Lead Prog. Analyst.
What is the difference b/w synchronized methods and synchronized sections?
What is static?
What is the diff. b/w hashtable and hashmap? 4
Describe projects.
Describe how to ensure quality of a function. 1
Any questions? I asked several questions.
Name: Jack (4.7.2006)
Position: Java Developer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Clear
Status: Declined
Comments
Great environment to flex your tech knowledge but there exists a deficiency in
software engineering principles.
Interview
Recruiter told me CME will extend an offer.
Name: Jack (3.29.2006)
Position: Jack
Job Type: Internship
Division: Finance software
Status: Pending
Application Process
Applied through site.
Comments
Based in Chicago.
Wage-based pay.
Interview
Phone-screened by some rep.
Describe experience w/ mult-tier architectures.
Describe experience w/ stand-alone/enterprise Java.
Describe relevant courses taken.

[top]

Citigroup

Name: dantheman82 (8.15.2006)

Position: Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: IT Training Program, NY/NJ
Status: First, Second Round, Third Round, turned down
Application Process
Round 1 at my school.
Round 2 in NYC at their 388 Greenwich street location (large umbrella buildling)
Round 3 in their NJ Rutherford office (now moved to another NJ location)
Interview
[Behavorial] What qualities would make a good manager?
[Behavioral] Which negative situation did you encounter in school and how did you
deal with or overcome that situation?
[Coding] Name a few differences between C# and Java.
[Coding] Define {relatively complex programming term (ie. Virtual inheritance,
polymorphism}
[Coding] Other miscellaneous more specific questions on 3rd round.
All in all, a pretty easy set of interviews...generally behavioral except for a piece of
the 2nd and most of the 3rd interview.

[top]

Citrix Online
Name: Jack (5.6.2006)
Position: SW Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Pending
Application Process
CS fair and applied via website.
Comments
No subsidized housing/airfare.
Quiz follows 1st interview. Following the quiz is a phone interview. Finally, they fly
you in for an on-site interview. 3
Internship based in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.
Interview
1st interview with recruiter.
Rate your C/C++/Java knowledge.
Describes interests relating to Citrix.
Name: Jack (5.17.2006)
Position: SW Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Declined
Application Process
Received call from a 2nd recruiter, probably for the same position.
Comments
Citrix continues to interview even though a position might be filled.
Interview
When contacted the 2nd recruiter, she told me the position might be filled but I can
still interview in a week. A little akward.
Name: Anonym (4.6.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Unknown
Status: Declined
Application Process
How do you transform a arbitrary tree (a tree in which a node can have multiple
children). Answer, Left-most child maps to left child. Right-hand brother maps to
right child. 1
TCP 3-way handshake procedure. TCP termination procedure. When one party
sends FIN to terminate the connection, can the other side keep the one way
connection and continue to send data? The answer is yes.

[top]

Deloitte

Name: Prem (7.18.2006)

Position: Systems Analyst
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Rejected
Application Process
The interview was completely behavioral
Tell me an instance when you had to display integrity to solve a problem
Few questions on resume..How do you document web applications...What goes into
the design and development part?
Tell me an instance when you had to take initiatives to solve problems.
Which one is ur fav project.. why? what were the challenges faced?
How do u test web applications etc...

[top]

Deshaw Inc

Name: Bharath.B (6.13.2006)

Position:
Job Type:
Division:
Status:
Interview
Write an algorithm to find the 9 digit number without zeros containing distinct digits
from 1 to 9 such that the number form upto to the nth digit is divisible by 9.Ie the
number formed by 1st and 2nd digits must be divisible by 2, the number formed by
1 to 7 digits is divisible by 7 and so on. 2
A file contains millions of 30 bit binary numbers. Write an algorithm to efficiently
place the pairs of numbers that are compliments in this file into another file.

[top]

EFI

Name: Anna (4.2.2006)

Position: Senior S/W Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Rejected
Application Process
Resume was forwarded by a staffing company
Interview
I was just asked 1 question. How would I find common elements in two arrays and
discard duplicate results. I said sort the arrays as binary trees so that is o(n lg n)
and while sorting remove duplicates. Now searching will take lg n. I guess this was
not the best answer. 4

[top]
Electronic Arts

Name: Nikhil Haldar-Sinha (4.10.2005)

Position: Developer
Job Type: Internship
Division: James Bond 007
Status:
Application Process
Hand resume to recruiter during presentation
Interview on campus
Phone interview with group
Interview
What games do you play? 1
Tell me about a project.
What was your hardest course?
What type of courses do you find the most difficult and why? 1
What will be the next breakthrough in gaming technology? 1
Interview
What is a hash and what would you use it for? 1
What is a dot product and cross product? What do you use them for? 3
What's 2^10?
Name: Jack (2.28.2006)
Position: Software Engineer - Tools
Job Type: Internship
Division: Tools
Status: Pending
Application Process
Applied through school website.
Comments
I was tired when I got to the interview due to 3 hrs of classes in a row. After she
told me I will receive notification in 2 weeks, I figured that I was rejected. Has
anyone waited 2 weeks for 2nd round interview notice?
Interview
Describe pitfalls of C++ for a game engine.
Describe toughest technical challenge.
Why EA?
Describe the debuggers you have used.
Why are templates in C++ useful?
Name: Jack (3.13.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: EA Downloader
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted resume to multiple positions via website.
Interview
1st interview with online developer. Told me to describe my work experience and
 technical experience.
2nd interview with software engineer.
Describe psuedo code to count the number of 1's in a binary number.
Asked to describe an OO Design for a card game. Most of the 2nd interview was
about OO Design and trade-offs in that design. Questions like, if the manager came
in and said add a border to an existing GUI, how would you approach that?
Name: Jack (3.21.2006)
Position: SW Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: EA Downloader
Status: Pending
Application Process
Passed 1st round interview.
2nd round with lead SW engineer.
Interview
Describe projects outside of academics.
Describe what you like to do.
Mostly questions on technical experience.
Name: Jack (3.27.2006)
Position: SW Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Plasma
Status: Accepted
Application Process
Passed 2nd round w/ lead SW eng.
Passed technical quiz.
Comments
Bay area in California.
Option to share housing with another intern.
Interview
Received technical quiz of about 15 questions. 6
Quiz tested knowledge of C++, networking, and OO.

[top]

Expedia

Name: Jack (2.17.2006)

Position: Software Design Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Software
Status: Awaiting decision
Application Process
Met female recruiter at internship career fair. Asked her about her background and
starting talking about my professional work. She cut me off and routed me to the
senior architect. The senior architect asked me, what is your favorite tier and why?
I said middle tier, "because that's where the action is." He said, come in tomorrow
so I did.
Comments
Awesome location/environment. Seattle is beautiful, just watch out for the volcano!
Very clean and organized. The employees are VERY good-looking and most of them
are young warriors.
Expedia broke away from Microsoft ~10 yrs ago.
Interview
1st interview was on-campus with senior architect. Many picky questions. How do
you find the size of something in C? Why does sizeof exist in C/C++ and not in
Java? Asked what VTBL is and why it's useful? When, asked to code fibonacci, I
asked iteratively or recursively? He asked what's the trade-off between the two?
Then I coded both. He said, there's a bug in your iterative solution. I looked and it
and said, int's can be negative. He said, bingo. Then I said, "but I made a
precondition that the input is positive." He was like, oh okay and how would you
check the condition? I said partitioned equivalence testing for <0,==0,>0. Also
asked what happens if you write an integer to disk on one OS and read it on
another OS? I said endianess and explained why it matters. H
2nd interview was on-site, with one of the team developers. Given a linked list,
swap values inside nodes. Now do it by swaping the node pointers. This wasn't a
hard question at all, but more of an organization question for me because it was
kind of a twisted question and easy to be off by one pointer. 9
3rd interview was with some other developer. Given two arrays of signed integers.
Find the intersecting set of the two. Describe different solutions. He once exclaimed
that I was digging into the next question and said I was the only one so far to do
that. The next question was implement strpbrk(char* str,char* find). It should
return the string starting from the first character matched(find contains a string of
characters). We ran out of time as he was asking me how to optimize my lookup(I
was using an array). 4
4th interview was w/ the tech lead. Asked a puzzle question and told me to use a
recursive algorithm. A grasshopper wants to cross a river onto the other side.
Partition the length he was to cross into intervals. Each interval either has a at most
1 stone or none. The grasshopper has to jump on the stones to cross the river. It
has a speed which is the number of intervals/jump. Initially speed is 0. To get to
the 1st stone, speed has to be 1. Given a boolean river array telling if an interval
has a stone, call another recursive function to see if it's possible for the
grasshopper to cross the river. Speed can only be decreased by one, same, or
increased by one. Didn't fully complete this function but he told me I was awefully
close. 7
5th interview was w/ the program manager. Asked questions on what features I
would incorporate into the hotel functionality of expedia. Mostly questions on
experience and background. Got the last 6 minutes to show off some of my work.

1st interview continued: e asked a few more technical questions on interfaces vs.
abstract and do you really need a VTBL in Java all the time since virtual functions
are implied? I refered to a Use Case diagram to explain why interfaces are
important. Also asked some basic questions on Java like what is a final class,
abstract class? Asked to describe my experience.
Name: XXXX (7.14.2006)
Position: Software Design Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Pending decision
Application Process
 Phone Interview, and then onsite call.
Comments
Company looks cool. People are dynamic, relaxed. There's no dress code. Some ppl
are in shorts!
Drinks are free!
No cubicles, a room for everyone!
Interview
Phone: Given a character array, print all the subsets of those characters
Design a deck of cards
Onsite: How do you determine the starting point of a loop in a linked list? Write
code.
What's the worst case runtime for this?
Given an string that has an IP address, write a function to return an integer that
has the four parts of the IP address in its bytes.

Implement atoi()

Write a program to find whether a machine is big endian or little endian 4

Design question, brainstorming: Design a system / give algorithm : There is a user
and a browser. The intranet has lots of machines but their internet connections are
slow, 2kbps. How do you use these machines to improve the user experience? Also,
devise a way to precrawl and cache the pages that are linked to the current page.
Trade offs/ design choices etc.
When do you think that a project is successful?

Similar questions..

Questions abt projects in resume, behavioral questions, team management

questions.
Given a binary search tree and a keyvalue, return the node that has value closest to
the key.
Write a program to check whether the given two logical addresses are in the same
page.
Questions on C++, templates, auto_ptr etc.
Write a program to shuffle a deck of cards. Write your own random function. How
will you make it more random? It's basically used in a casino, so it has to be AS
RANDOM as possible. How can you make sure that no one sees your random
function?
Name: Khoa (5.18.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Intern
Division:
Status: received offers
Comments
Implement a Queue class using only two stacks. Implement a memory allocator.
7
Knapsack Algorithm - a set of items where each item has weight and value. If a
person can only carry a limited amount of weight, find all items in the set such that
the sum of values is optimal. You can not divide the item.
Design a Graph class and implement shortest path. Topological Sort - You have a
 bunch of processes and they are dependent on each other. One process has to be
run first before the other. How would you schedule the processes?
Find two largest values in an array of integers and determine whether the sum of
two numbers can overflow. Numbers can be signed or unsigned int. Design classes
for pack of playing cards. How would you shuffle it? DFS and BFS on a Graph.
Algo to find out all valid combinations of n brackets. Like for n =3 possible
combinations can be ((())) or ()()() or (()()) and so on. 3
Permutation of an array of integers. Print out all the combinations of integers in an
array where the sum is equal to N. 1
What is your defination of good C++ code?
Name: Philip (7.24.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Rejected after 2nd Phone Interview
Application Process
Applied through Web site 3
Interview
Asked about Polymorphism
Write a program to calculate the nth Fibonacci number.
What is the best way to find if someone has won in a game of tic tac toe?
Given a sorted array of n integers that has been rotated either to the left or to the
right by i places, give an algorithm that searches and finds an element in the array
in log n time.
How will you determine if a loop exists in a link list?
How will you merge two sorted arrays. The first array has enough empty spaces to
accomodate the second array.
Remove duplicates from a sorted array
Convert an ip address into a D word 3
Count the number of set bits in a byte

[top]

EZ Prints

Name: Jack (4.20.2006)

Position: Continuous Improvement Engineer
Job Type: Internship to part-time
Division: Engineering
Status: Declined
Application Process
Submitted resume.
Comments
5 yrs running.
Transitioning to software engineering principles.
Self-test code.
7 developers.
Lack of enthusiasm.
Interview
Interview with Director of Software Development.
Describe experience improving software.
Interviewer told me a good amount of their code is inefficient or hard to maintain.
Hence, the position.

[top]

Gabby

Name: Khoa (6.1.2006)

Position:
Job Type:
Division:
Status:
Application Process
I just found this really cool tool where everyone can chat live. Just add
'gabbly.com/' in front of any URL, and you'll be able to chat with other folks on that
site using the same URL. Go to this site
http://gabbly.com/www.glaak.com/interviews and a chatroom pop up will appear
on the upper right corner on Gayle's website. You can see people in the chatroom
too.

[top]

GameLoft

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Application Process
Applied via PennLinnk
First step: create simple arcade game with java. I did this game, then they told me
that they are looking for only immediate hires
Comments
Game loft creates games for cell phones, pdas, etc

[top]

Geofields

Name: Jack (1.27.2006)

Position: QA Tester
Job Type: Internship
Division: Testing
Status: Pending
Application Process
Phone screen. Asked how I feel about QA. Told me to describe a project I worked
on involving testing. Invited to on-site interview after phone conversation.
1st round interview with Lead Engineer. All behavioral questions.
2nd round interview with Project Manager. Asked to describe one of my projects. In
general, all behavorial questions.
Comments
Changed from a consulting to software firm.
Has solid client base.
Didn't know that the person calling me was the Lead Engineer.
Small company that prefers to stay small(~30 employees, 2 offices).
I asked them how they deal with overloaded work. The Lead Engineer said that
they buy more systems. I got the impression that efficiency isn't much of a concern
at this firm. At least they have a nice office and company logo.

[top]

Georgia Pacific

Name: Jack (2.20.2006)

Position: IT developer
Job Type: part time
Division: IT
Status: pending
Application Process
Emailed resume to recruiter.
Comments
They buy a lot of high-tech gadjets, mostly funded by R&D. From what the
manager told me, they try to implement solutions for clients by purchasing
expensive technology and loading in software.
One cool technology is a projector that projects an image onto any surface. There's
a sensor in the projector that will detect when you push a button on the surface.

Interview
Phone screened by project manager.
Invited to on-site interview. All behavioral questions. Asked to describe what I
wanted to do in GP and general thoughts on advancements in technology.
Half of interview was in office. The 2nd half was a tour of the facilities.

[top]

Globaltech Research
Name: Jack (5.3.2006)
Position: Soft Dev.
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted resume.
Comments
1st interview via IM to test writing skills.
Interview
The purpose of this interview is to evaluate your written communication skills. I will
ask you a question every few minutes; before I ask the question, I will let you know
exactly how many minutes you will have to answer. I will keep track of the time,
and I will prompt you for a response if you haven't provided one already. I am
going to ask you a total of 9 questions. The whole evaluation will take no more than
an hour. Whenever your box fills up with a part of your response while you're
typing, just send that part in and then continue typing the rest.
kanariay: Your response to each question should be at least 4-6 sentences. Please
answer the questions in complete sentences to the best of your ability. Don't worry
about making mistakes - I am aware that your answers may be less polished than if
you had more time to revise your grammar. Feel free to be creative - there are no
right or wrong answers. Are you clear on how the interview will work?
What is one of your favorite meals or snacks to prepare, and how do you make it?
(3 minutes)
Identify, in your opinion, three of the biggest problems plaguing the world today,
and suggest a possible remedy for one of them. (8 minutes)
You have received a fantastic job offer and know that it is because your professor
highly recommended you to the company. Below write a short thank you note to
her/him. (Do not include the heading, i.e., Dear Professor X,). (8 minutes)
Describe a challenging experience you've had and what you did to overcome it. (5
minutes)
You really want to attend Hudson University in New York. It is your first time visiting
an American university, and you do not want to apply without seeing a dorm room.
However, the security guard at the front desk tells you that you need a Hudson
University Student ID to enter the building, no exceptions! How would you get into
the building? | Come up with at least two strategies. You may not offer her money
or any other favors, and you do not just happen to have a fake ID with you. (7
minutes)
A friendly alien from a distant galaxy is visiting Earth. It wants to know how to
greet a dog. How would you instruct the alien to approach a dog and express
affection? The alien can see and hear you, but it cannot understand your language.
(10 minutes)
Pretend you are writing a letter to your university to complain about an unfair
professor. Write the first paragraph of this letter. (This time, include the heading.)
(8 minutes)
Have you ever led other people? Please describe the experience. What did you like
and not like about it? What did you learn? (5 minutes)
Please list the most important technology hubs (by city area) for:
(at least 5 each)
Asia
Europe
 Americas
(6 minutes)

[top]

Gold-Tier

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full time
Division:
Status: Interviewed in NJ, turned down after that
Application Process
Applied via PennLink
Interview in NJ
Comments
Not sure really where this company is headed... do they really have a product?
Privately funded, no cash flow yet
Very small company, located in NJ (just outside of Philly). Produce banking
software.
Interview
Questions about experience at Apple
Algorithm: khanji has a LOT of characters in their alphabet and are using a way of
compressing it so that the most common characters are 1 byte and the less
common are 2 bytes. If it's a '1 byte' character, it starts with a 0, If it's a 2 byte
character, it starts with a 1. If you're at a particular character (at the beginning),
how do you find where the previous character begins? 12

[top]

Goldman Sachs

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Technology Analyst
Job Type: Full time
Division: Equities
Status: Received Offer
Application Process
Information Session in the middle of September
Submitted resume via PennLink 2
First round interview at Penn 1
Second round interview in NYC. All expenses paid.
Comments
This seems like a pretty good division to be in. The hours are reasonable, the pay is
ok, and the people seem nice. People don't really seem to have their own offices,
except for management, everyone just works on desks out in the main area. I liked
this position much more after my interviews than I did walking into it. If you get an
 second round with GS, try to request this group. 3
Most of Goldman Sachs Technology is software for internal use. Equities, however,
produces software for external clients
Knowing about finance isn't important
Typical Hours: 8:30am - 6pm
Interview
What I did at apple
Why I want to go to Goldman Sachs
What’s the difference between a vector and an array 2
Coding: SQL query to select number of elements in a table
Coding: SQL query to select max value for each element (select max(salary) from
Companies group by CompanyID)
Difference between objective-c and c++ 1
Interview
2 interviews on schedule. Randomly got a 3rd added to my schedule with the
manager, then the manager had me talk to someone else as I was leaving 1
Equities division in Jersey City. Took short ferry ride
Equities provides software to external clients. Rest of GS provides internal software.
Equities technology was bought out from some other company
4 releases / year + updates as needed
Experience at Apple, Microsoft
Algorithm: print a singly linked list in reverse order
Coding: return max depth of binary tree
- I used recursion
- How would you do it without recursion? 3
What is: in-order traversal of tree, quick sort in an array
On senior project, where did I use custom controls?
Group particularly wanted someone with UI Design experience
Offer
$X / year 8
$X "relocation" (aka, signing bonus)
Training starts end of july
Given one month to make decision
Name: Mr. Know-It-All (9.24.2005)
Position: Solaris systems administrator
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Internet division
Status: I was turned down
Application Process
referred by headhunter
Comments
I have several years of experience as a Solaris sysadmin but I am sort of lazy
Interview
I was interviewed by many people in a row
I was interviewed by the project manager, then by four other people one after
another
One question I blew was regarding the sticky bit, which was embarassing.
Then there was the old standard, what programs have to be running on the server
 and client for an NFS mount to work (answer: to work, just nfsd and mountd on the
server; although both client and server SHOULD be running nfsd and mountd)
Name: Jack (2.28.2006)
Position: Technology Analyst
Job Type: Internship
Division: Undecided
Status: Pending
Application Process
Applied through school website.
Comments
Haven't gotten back a response for a little over a week.
Interview
Did I use JSP precompilation for one of my academic projects?
Why GS?
Describe a project
Name: Anon (4.3.2006)
Position: Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Investment Research
Status:
Application Process
Recruiter didn't tell me that I was scheduled for a phone interview with Goldman.
The interviewer was okay with rescheduling but I still went ahead with the
interview. 2
Comments
It lasted 30 minutes.
Interview
Suppose you have a list of jars to compile and some jars are dependent on others,
what kind of data structure would you use to store the jar files? For example, if you
had jars A, B, C, and D. A is dependent on B and C. B is dependent on D. What data
structure would you use to store these dependencies? 1
Which jar would you build first? B or C? 1
Suppose you have a 100 files in a directory and you need to find out if a keyword
occurs in these files. How would you do it in Unix? How would you do it in
Windows? 2
How would you handle the above situation if say you had 10 million files? 1
There were some general questions about my current job. Windows or Unix/Linux?
C/C++ or Java? And common questions like those. 1

[top]

HCL

Name: Pankaj Tiwari (8.28.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Application Process
Written Test aptitue and tech questions
Personnel Interview Round
Interview
Difference between encapsulation, abstraction and information hiding?
Why do we need C++?
What is signature of function and operator overloading? Why do we need it?
What are templates? What is benefit of having template? And trade off between
template and overloading?
What is need of virtual destructor?
What is VTable? How its organised?
How do u load dynamically a DLL?
What is a Singleton class?

[top]

Hewlett Packard

Name: Khoa (4.13.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Received Offers
Application Process
Submit my resume through their online website.
Comments
You get a variety of questions with HP. It all depends on which group you're
interviewing with. Some might ask all behavioral questiosn while others are all
technical.
Interview
Binary Tree, Splay Tree
Differences between process and thread
what are core dumps? What kind of editor do you use to look at core dumps?
virtual and pure virtual functions. Virtual inheritance.
Behavorial questions. How do you motivate your team? How do you tell a co-worker
that he/she aren't doing a good job.

[top]

IBM

Name: Khoa (4.13.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Accepted Offer
Application Process
Apply through their online website.
Comments
Accumulation of multiple interviews with IBM including Speed Teams and regular
co-op positions.
Interview
Questions about past experience. Teamwork and leadership skills.
Questions about Linkers and Loaders.
Questions about OOP, Design Patterns, Java, and C++. Just basic OOP questions
like Pure Virtual Functions, Virtual Pointer Table, Abstract classes, Interfacce,
Inheritance, Polymorphism. 2
Basic data structures questions. Linked List, Arrays, Splay Tres, Binary Tree, Hash.
Discuss when you should use Hashing over Tress.
Name: Khoa (4.14.2005)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Extreme Blue Internship
Status: Turned after references checking
Application Process
Submit resume online.
Comments
They do check references. I didn't get along very well with my former IBM mentor.
IBM insisted on putting him as a reference.
Supposedly four rounds.
1) Interview with Human Resources.
2) 2 hour technical phone interview. You got to be on Instant Messaging for this
interview.
3) Checking References
4) Interview with project manager
Interview
All behavioral questions. Since this is a team project, they ask a lot of questions
about teamwork and leadership questions.
Interview
What are some advantages and disadvantages of building your software on top of
open source projects?
Choose two languages you're most familiar with (C, C++, Java).
Since I choose C++ and Java, there were a lot of questions about this two
languages particularly OOP. There were more detail questions but they are easy.

Talked about Design Patterns 4

What kind of project are you interested in?
Case Study: The IRS wants your team to build an application to do taxes. Write the
initial proposal. Design and architect your solutions. You got to discuss this in
details.
Name: Rupi (4.2.2006)
Position: Build Engineer Internship
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Offer
Interview
 Interviewed by Tech Lead
IPATO test 2
Name: (3.27.2006)
Position: software eng
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Pending
Application Process
Had a phone interview with IBM for internship program. Mostly questions were
related to Resume and projects.
1. What is windows registry? why we need it and how come we can edit it. Can we
use database instead of it. why or why not.
2. Given 2 sorted arrays ....merge them into 3rd array. Think what you can do if
you have 1000 arrays like this.
3. What is convex hull?
4. how to find a loop in singly link list.

[top]

Iconologic

Name: Jack (3.1.2006)

Position: Web Developer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Software
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted resume through school website.
Comments
About ~20 employees. Not looking to necessarily grow but is considering opening
offices elsewhere. Received several awards and had their work illustrated in
magazines.
Mostly design and interactive projects.
At the end of the interview, the CIO gave me his card and told me to send him
some of my portfolio.
Interview
Interview with CIO and some other guy.
Told me to describe my experience with JavaScript, Databases, SQL, and Flash.
Asked about my experience with middle-tier development.
Discussed the company's vision, culture, and goals.
Mostly behavorial questions dealing with experience.
Name: Jack (3.27.2006)
Position: Web Developer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Software
Status: Declined
Comments
Seems like a dynamic company. Proposed to schedule client projects for summer as
well as give "exploratory/entreprenuerial" control over certain projects.
Interview
Sent a 150 MB portfolio. Received offer shortly after.
Offer
Full-time over the summer

[top]

Infosys

Name: Khoa (4.8.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: N/A
Application Process
Submit my resume through Infosys Instep website.
Comments
Interns will spend their summer at Infosys headquarter(Bangalore, Indian) 1
1 hour phone interview. I thought my interview was at 9 A.M but they called me 7
A.M in the morning. Be sure to convert the time correctly.
Interview
What is smart-pointer in C++
Talked about design patterns
Difference between process and thread.
Asked about sorting algorithms.
100 closed lockers. You begin by opening all 100 lockers. Next, you close every
second locker. Then you go to every third locker and close it if it is open or open it if
it is closed (call this toggling the locker). After your 100th pass of the hallway, in
which you toggle only locker number 100, how many lockers are open? 6
You got an array of strings. You want all the anagrams to be next to each other.
Name: Ankur Dhawan (6.26.2006)
Position: Programmer Analyst
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Interview
What is the difference between SAX and DOM? Which API provides a faster
implementation?
In Java, if we insert a return statement inside the try block of a try-catch-finally,
will the finally block still get executed? 1
What is the benefit of using StringBuffer?
What log file can you refer to for determining if a JUnit test failed?
How does Struts implement MVC?
How would you shallow copy an object?
What other design patterns have you been exposed to?
What is Singleton design pattern, and how would you implement it?
Other questions as came up during the conversation ... total of 45 minutes on the
 phone. Informed me that HR will be in touch for a 2nd technical interview.
Name: Ankur Dhawan (6.26.2006)
Position: Programmer Analyst
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Interview
What is the difference between SAX and DOM? Which API provides a faster
implementation?
In Java, if we insert a return statement inside the try block of a try-catch-finally,
will the finally block still get executed?
What is the benefit of using StringBuffer?
What log file can you refer to for determining if a JUnit test failed?
How does Struts implement MVC?
How would you shallow copy an object?
What other design patterns have you been exposed to?
What is Singleton design pattern, and how would you implement it?
Other questions as came up during the conversation ... total of 45 minutes on the
phone. Informed me that HR will be in touch for a 2nd technical interview.
Name: Ankur Dhawan (6.26.2006)
Position: Programmer Analyst
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Interview
What is the difference between SAX and DOM? Which API provides a faster
implementation?
In Java, if we insert a return statement inside the try block of a try-catch-finally,
will the finally block still get executed?
What is the benefit of using StringBuffer?
What log file can you refer to for determining if a JUnit test failed?
How does Struts implement MVC?
How would you shallow copy an object?
What other design patterns have you been exposed to?
What is Singleton design pattern, and how would you implement it?
Other questions as came up during the conversation ... total of 45 minutes on the
phone. Informed me that HR will be in touch for a 2nd technical interview.

[top]

Intel

Name: Khoa (11.29.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: SSG/Validation
Status: offers
Application Process
 Applied through Intel website and through recruiters 1
Comments
I have had many interviews with Intel. This is a summary of all my interviews with
Intel. 4
Interview
Computer Architecture: Virtual Memory, Interrupts, Cache, Hazards, CISC vs RISC.

When do you use a double pointer? 2

Draw all the components of a computer!
C/C++ questions - OOP 1
Data Structures: Linked List, Array, Hash, Binary Tree
What's XD bit? How does buffer overflow work?
Behavior questions: favorite internship, projects...

[top]

Interactive Design

Name: Jack (4.6.2006)

Position: Web Developer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Software
Status: Declined
Application Process
Submitted resume.
Comments
Create tanning/salon online/offline software.
Want to port the offline software to the web.
Less than 20 employees.
Weakness: "finding qualified employees"
Strengths: trying to be pioneers in the salon/tanning industry
Interview
Basically told me what they need and how comfortable I am with completing that
assignment.

[top]

Intuit

Name: Khoa (4.14.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Quickbooks and Quickens
Status: Second round onsite interview - Pending
Application Process
Submit resume online.
Comments
Had a 40 minute technical/behavoiral phone interview.
Onsite second round interview. Three 30 minutes interview. All interviews took
place at their cafeteria. There were about 30 candidates at the time I was
interviewing. It was a fun atmosphere.
The cater indian food was really good.
Interview
OOP Java questions.
Data Structures
Behavoiral questions: Leadership skills. How did you convince your to accept your
ideas? Conflict resolutions.
Interview
1st Interview - Mainly behavioral questions and experiences
2nd Interview - Still behavioral questions. Some questions were the same as the
first interview.
3rd Interview - Technical. You have 5 basketball teams. You want them to play each
other only once. Each team plays once a week. If a team plays a home game this
week, They should play a aways game the coming week. How many weeks does it
take for all the teams for play each other? 9

[top]

JP Morgan

Name: Khoa (5.16.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Rejected on the first round
Application Process
Applied via Erecruiting.
Interview
Asked me about OS projects.
Why do I want to study Computer Science?
Asked what I do on my free time? I said Yoga. He wants me to sell him yoga.
Why do I want to work for JP Morgain and Various typical behavioral questions.

[top]

Lime Systems

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Offer, pending available position
Application Process
Applied via Monster.com
Had me take some quizzes to assess my skills with C#/Visual Studio, XSLT, XML
Interview in NJ office
Comments
6 people in company. Been around since 1997.
Two products:
- Content management solutions for websites
- Error reporting for medical lasers
From signature:
"Lime Systems provides Development, Applications, Strategy and Hosting for IT
challenged organizations. Through our breadth of services, technology and
experience we are able to offer a wide range of solutions to assist with most all IT
problems. Our clients use our software products and services to determine their
technology strategy and exceed their customers' expectations"
Company lacks focus...
Interview
Had to bring code samples with me
Pretty much just questions about experience. Nothing too technical

[top]

Lincoln Labs

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Interview on Penn's campus... no response since
Application Process
Applied via PennLink
Interviewed at Penn
Comments
Lincoln Labs will tell you that they do mainly defense... but that's what every
weapons company says. At some point, some has to be producing the weapons
For me personally, I'd rather produce normal software, not things which are life or
death matters
Interview
Just questions about experience

[top]

MarketRX

Name: Karthik Srinivasan (4.21.2006)

Position: Jr. Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: MarketRX
Status: Pending....
Application Process
MarketRX.com -> career section (These guys develop BI products for pharma
companies) 1
Interview
Interviewer> If we have a table containing Emp_ID,Emp_Name and
Dept_ID(Primary key) and another table having Emp_Name and Dept_ID (foreign
key), how would u find the number of employees in each dept?
Interviewer> What GroupBy in SQL do?
Interviewer> difference between Server.Transfer, Server.Execute and
Response.redirect?
Interviewer> How many round trips happen during server.transfer and
response.redirect?
Interviewer> Assume if page1.aspx has response.write("Hello") and does
server.transfer to 'page2.aspx' and page2.aspx has response.write("hello1") and
does server.transfer to 'page3.aspx, then what do page3.aspx display? (does it
display information in Page3.aspx page only or everything that Page1.aspx and
Page2.aspx displayed? Why?
Interviewer> What's the difference between DataView and DataReader?
Interviewer> How to find the number of records in a DataReader?
Interviewer> How to find the number of records in a DataSet?
Interviewer> Which member function of Sqldataadapter is used to fill the dataSet?

Interviewer> If we have to validate 2 testbox in ASP.NET using JavaScript...how to

do u it?

[top]

Merrill Lynch

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Technology Analyst
Job Type: Invited to interview in NYC (all expenses paid), declined interview
Division:
Status:
Application Process
Applied via PennLink
Interviewed at Penn
Invited to interview in NYC
Comments
I haven't heard very good things about working here as a Technlogy Analyst. Think
twice about working somewhere where software is not their primary purpose
Interview
1 interviewer
Discussion about experience. no technical questions
Guy didn’t think I was interested – thought I wouldn’t be happy. He thought that I
 was more than qualified, but that I wouldn't like it. Very odd interview... 1
Name: Khoa (5.17.2005)
Position: Technology Analyst
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Rejected in the first round
Application Process
Applied via Erecruiting.
Comments
Told me that someone is going to call me back but never did.
Eventhough the internship doesn't sound that challenging as far as programming,
but you'll have a chance to live in NY and live in the same building as interns from
JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. It should be fun if you like people.
Interview
It was a pretty informal interview.
I spend time making fun of his title - Six Sigma Black Belt.
We chatted about how much I disklike the IBM division that I worked for.

[top]

Micron

Name: Jack (4.12.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Product Engineering
Status: Pending
Comments
No code-reviews or peer-programming. OOA/OOD is done individually.
Based in Idaho. One internship position.
Team events generally consisting of celebrating birthdays.
Use rapid prototyping.
Dress code: very casual.
Interview
Difference b/w shallow & deep copy? 1
Difference b/w interface and abstract class?
Describe technical experience.
Describe polymorphism.
What are the trade-offs in C++ vs Java?
What would you do with an object that is used as a key to a hash data structure?
2
Name: Jack (4.12.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Product Engineering
Status: Pending
Application Process
Some wormhole caused my resume to travel through time back-and-forth because I
 don't remember applying. :oP 2
Interview
Received phone-call from recruiter. Described the position to me and arranged a
phone interview.
Name: Jack (4.12.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Product Engineering
Status: Declined
Interview
Recruiter called to inform me that an offer will be extended and arranged a phone
session to describe internship.

[top]

Microsoft

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Software Design Engineer
Job Type: Full Time (+3 prior internships)
Division: Mobile Devices and Windows Media (+ Visual Studio Core and Programmer
Productivity at an intern)
Status: Received offers from Mobile Devices and Windows Media (+ previously
accepted 3 internship offers)
Application Process
Apply via Career fair and talk to Stacey (the microsoft recruiter) or another
employee. 1
Interview on Penn's campus. Microsoft decides what position you're best suited for

Flown out to seattle, all expenses paid, where you interview with 2 groups. You are
typically are scheduled for 2 interviews per group, plus an initial interview with the
recruiter. Note: everyone on your interview loop will be emailing each other
throughout the day. Between interviews, you'll be asked to wait in the lobby while
your previous interviewer gets the next one... what's really going on is your
interviewer is emailing everyone else to say what they asked you and how you did.
They're also supposed to give a "hire" or "no hire" recommendation, though they
don't always 1
... but, if (and only if) your day is going well (you have two "hire"'s from the same
group), you'll normally get an "as app" interview (though they won't tell you that's
what's going on). An as app interview is an interview that you aren't told about in
advance and is with a manager who makes the "final" decision 5
Comments
Microsoft is fun to work for, but some groups are doing stuff which is sort of boring
and unimportant. You may want to request a group, if you have that option.
However, if you request a group, they'll try hard to accommodate you which can
mean getting you an interview which you otherwise would not have gotten.
Free sodas :-)
My internship was great. Interns are treated like full time employees and my code
will ship.
 The final round is in Seattle - all expenses paid
Interview
Questions on experience 1
Coding/Algorithm: Since XML is very verbose, you are given a way of encoding it
where each tag gets mapped to a predefined integer value. The language/grammar
looks like:
Element --> Element Attr* END Element END [aka, encode the element tag, then
its attributes, then tack on an END character, then encode its children, then another
end tag]
Attr --> Tag Value [assume all values are strings]
END --> 01
Tag --> some predefined mapping to int
Value --> string value END
- Coding: Write code to encode xml element (as char *) as Byte *
- Algorithm: Is there anything else you could do to (in many cases) compress this
even furthur? 8
Coding: Game of master mind: you have four balls, and four different colors, as a
solution. The user tries to guess the solution. If they guess the right color for the
right spot, it counts as a 'hit'. If it's the right color, but the wrong spot, it counts as
a psuedo-hit. For example: if the solution is 'RGGB' and the user guesses 'YRGB'
they have 2 hits and one pseudo hit. Write a program to, given a solution and a
guess, calculate the number of hits and pseudo hits. 15
Coding: You have an n pointed star with points labeled 0, 1, ..., n-1 (assume points
are numbered in order). You want to draw this star (imagine a kid's scribble for a 5-
pointed star... That kind of star). Assume you have a function drawLine(int
indexOne, int indexTwo) which can draw a line from one point of a star to another.
Write a program to draw the star. 15
Coding/Test: I want to be able to maintain a list of my family's birthdates and print
them in oldest-to-youngest order. Implement the classes and methods that I need
for this
Test: how would you test this (if you were doing black box testing)? 13
Offer
In California office: real salary = base salary + 15% (to account for higher cost of
living) 1
Dev and PM's get about the same salary, test gets a bit less 3
Signing bonus: some stock grants
Vacation: 3 weeks + 10 paid holidays
Relocation:
- One month free temp housing
- Two weeks rental car
- 20,000 pounds shipped
Name: Feng Zhao (4.4.2005)
Position: Software Design Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Accepted offer
Interview
Coding: function generate nth fibonnaci number
- what's the largest n could be? 8
Coding: Reverse linked list 6
Coding: Write code to compute the intersection of 2 rectangles 8
 What's the difference between c++ and java? 7
Coding: Many overlapping rectangles - want to return which (doesn't matter which
one, if it's over several) rectangle the mouse is over. 20
Coding: I have a HxW picture, 32 bit picture --> represented by int array. How do
you rotate the picture by 90 degrees into a new array? Write the code 15
Name: Steven Saviano (4.4.2005)
Position: Software Design Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Accepted offer
Interview
Questions about prior project
Coding: binary search tree:
- find element with given key and return
- node deletion 1
Algorithm: You have a video card with memory. You can read and write to it.
However, you can only write to it through a byte mask (if bit of byte mask ==1,
then you can write to that bit, if == 0, the bit stays unchanged). Also, you can not
read the byte mask (you can only change it). How do you determine what the value
of the byte mask is (you can write to the video card as long as it is restored to the
same condition as you left it). 3
Coding: 2 arrays, a and b, both are sorted ascendingly
you know the size of b
you dont know the size of a but you know a can at a minimum hold the size of the
current valid values of a (all valid values are at beginning of array) plus the size of
b
- How do you combine the two arrays into a while keeping a sorted when returned
(no extra array to use) 12
Coding: You have a linked list
struct node
{
int selected;
struct node *next;
struct node *child;
}
intitially all childs are null and it is just a linked list
given a list with some marked and some not, make a linked list such that:
there is a linked list of just the not_selected, then the last element in that list is an
element without any data but its child is pointing to a linked list that has all the
selected nodes (the last element of which points back to the one with the child
node)
- how would you traverse this new structure (even if there was a child that had
other childs
- what if that circular connection was cut, then how would you traverse it?
- what if you can add a boolean value to the structure (that you can only set as you
traverse). then how would you do it 1
Coding/Algorithm: You know how web adresses convert spaces and such into
special characters
i.e., space == %20
- given a string, convert the string to a string where all spaces are %20
- what are the different ways to do it
- what if unlimited memeory, what if you cant have any memory and the string has
 extra space at the end that isnt used (buffer)
- what if you want to say if the string will cutoff and only convert if cut off 4
Name: Ravi Chugh (4.4.2005)
Position: Program Manager
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Accepted offer
Interview
Interviewed with Project and Office Shared Services
Design: How would you implement scoreboards for different games played on Xbox
Live?
- Databases, API, …
Design: How would you design the interface of Project for CEOs?
Design: How would you present the data to Jeff Riggs?
What's the biggest mistake you ever made?
What's the best designed technology?
Design: Design a remote control for blinds in an upscale home. Design it to control
multiple blinds. Is it easy enough for your grandmother to use?
Design: [Shown picture of climate control system for a car]. Redesign the climate
control system for the next model year.
Pitch a new product to Bill Gates. Why should he invest it, how will it be profitable
to the company?
Imagine a bulldozer - thick tank tread, rotating cabin, extendable arm with claw on
the end to pick up things. It is parked on the edge of a cliff. Fifty yards away a
house is on fire. Lois Lane is on the third floor. Woody Allen is about to get into the
bulldozer and rescue Lois Lane, and then speed after some bad guys in the
bulldozer. Design the controls in the cabin so that there is a zero learning curve to
figure out how to control all operations. 1
Name: Chao Cai (4.4.2005)
Position: Software Design Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Accepted offer
Interview
Code: Reverse C-Style String. (C-String means that "abcd\n" is actually
represented as six characters") 13
Code: print a linked list in reverse order
- Can you do this in O(n) time, O(1) memory? [O(1) memory = no recursion] 7
Code: You have an array of integers (both positive and negative). Find the
continuous sequence with the largest sum. (ie, if the array was {6,-8, 3, -2, 4}
then you'd want to return {3,-2, 4}) 36
Code: You have two sorted integer arrays and the larger array has room for the
second. Merge the smaller array into the larger one, in O(n) time and O(1) space.
11
Code: Game of battleship. Implement shoot(x,y). What are the data structure you
would use?
Code: Find the first occurence of a string in a multi-string. (multi-string means that
you could have a string like "cat\0dog\0monkey\0\0". The true end of the series of
strings occurs when you hit two null chars in a row) 6
Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)
Position: Any
Job Type: N/A
Division: N/A
Status: N/A
Interview
These are general questions I've heard of people getting...
What area of life is left for technology? 2
Name 5 programs that you think could help in retail
- What technologies would you use?
What's the next big invention?
Explain webservices to your grandmother
Explain Object oriented to your grandmother
Explain Object oriented to your grandmother
Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)
Position: Program Manager
Job Type: N/A
Division: N/A
Status: N/A
Interview
These are general questions I've heard of PMs getting
Program Manager = "PM" = you design the features - you don't manage anyone.
For example, the PM in charge of alt-tab on Windows would have probably written a
paper about what the functionality. This includes:
- icons should be 32 pixels apart
- they should be listed in most recently used order
- by default, the second item should be selected
- tab should iterate forward, shift-tab should iterate backwards
- screenshot of dialog
Pros: you get to make the decisions about the product and help shape the product
Cons: do you really want to write papers all day? Are these skills transferable to
other companies?
Design: Key fab targeted at a 16 year old girl whose father is buying the car?
Explain Object oriented to your grandmother
Design: Assuming price is no object, what would you put in a handicapped
bathroom?
If you were an absentee landlord, how would you take care of your housing?
What's your favorite Microsoft product? Name five ways you could improve it
Design: How would you design an ATM for the blind
Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)
Position: Software Design Engineer
Job Type: N/A
Division: N/A
Status: N/A
Interview
These are general questions I've heard of SDE's getting
Software Design Engineer = "dev" = "sde" = developer: you're the one who writes
the code... but you code based on the spec from the PM
Pros: your code ships. You're really building something. And it looks pretty good to
be a developer for Microsoft.
Cons: You are behind a desk all day. Although you can talk with the PM about the
features if you don't agree with him, it is his/her decision in the end. You are
working on the same application for a long time
 Coding: Write atoi 3
Coding: Write program to continuously keep average. ie, you have a prototype
function "double computeAverage(double newVal)" 2
Coding: Write program to take the union of two rectangles 8
Coding: Write a program to swap a number in place (ie, no temp variables) 9
Coding: Write program to reverse a string 1
Coding: Write a program to determine if a binary tree is well ordered 5
Algorithm: Describe an algorithm to determine if a singly linked list is corrupt 7
Algorithm: Give the most efficient algorithm to determine if a string has all unique
characters 9
Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)
Position: Software Design Engineer in Test
Job Type: N/A
Division: N/A
Status: N/A
Interview
These are general questions I've heard of SDET's getting
Software Design Engineer in Test = "sdet" = "dev test" = you ARE a coder.. but you
write automation code.
Pros: a lot of freedom about what language you can use.... a lot more flexibility.
Smaller projects, less likely to get bored. It's actually a pretty good position.
Any of the SDE questions are SDET questions too
Test: How would you test program to generate first n random numbers 2
Test: How would you test an email client? What could be automated? What wouldn't
make sense to be automated?
Test: Imagine that you're writing an email spider-er... What would you do to test
it?
Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)
Position: Software Test Engineer
Job Type: N/A
Division: N/A
Status: N/A
Interview
These are general questions I've heard of STE's getting
Software Test Engineer = "test" = you test stuff. This doesn't mean, on Outlook,
that you would just use email all day and see what happens... you write test plans
(a paper about what needs to be tested) and test on extreme conditions. At other
companies, STE and SDET are merged into a "QA" position
Pros: you're not writing code. You interact closely with the other three positions
Cons: you're not writing code (depends on how you look at it)
Test: How would you test program to generate first n random numbers 4
Test: How would you test an email client? What could be automated? What wouldn't
make sense to be automated?
Test: Imagine that you're writing an email spider-er... What would you do to test
it?
Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)
Position: Any (Brain Teasers)
Job Type: N/A
Division: N/A
Status: N/A
Interview
I believe these are getting phased out, but you still could be asked it...
You have two ropes, each of which burns for exactly one hour. But, the ropes vary
in density so you don't know that half of one rope will burn for 30 minutes. Given
those two ropes and a book of matches, how would you time 15 minutes? (Note:
you don't need to be able to hand someone a piece of rope that will take 15
minutes. You just need to be able to time 15 minutes) 3
You've got a 5 quart jug and 3 quart jug, and an unlimited supply of water (but no
measuring cups), how would you come up with exactly one gallon of water? 11
A bunch of couples are on an island. A genie comes down and gathers the men
together and tells them: "I know for a fact that at least one of your wives is
cheating on you. So, if your wife is cheating on you, I'm going to put a code on
your head." The men then ask for a way to remove it, which she grants: "to remove
it, you must dunk your wife under water at exactly midnight. If you are wrong, you
die - so don't mess up. You will not be able to see or feel the crown on your head,
but everyone else can. However, they are forbidden to tell you or signal in any way
that you have a crown." How long does it take the men remove the crowns?
(Assume there are n men and c crowns. The men do not know what c is) 7
Offer
Internship offer is the best you'll find probably anywhere (but I can't really say
what it is....)
Housing:
- $500/month housing stipend OR
- pay for intern housing at ~$650/month
Shipping: $500 (total - includes both ways) of shipping reimbursed
Car/bike plan:
- rent a car from Avis at $350/month OR
- $300 bike is reimbursed
Name: Matt Jones (4.6.2005)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Internship
Division: Visual Studio
Status: Accepted Offer
Interview
What are all the thing things would you need to consider while designing a vending
machine? 3
How would you represent a game of tic tac toe (data structures, etc.)? Improve on
the design. Implement it in pseudocode. 2
Develop a way to represent 32 bit numbers as 8-character strings (including the
null character, so 7 bits of data). You can use 0-9 and a-z. Code it on the board.
Develop unit test cases to test your code. 1
Refactor this C++ code.
Debug this C++ code.
If you have existing list linked list, and you are given a new one... make as few
updates as possible to transform the old list into the new one. 2
Name: Saurav (7.25.2005)
Position: SDET 3
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Tablet PC Group
Status: Received Offer
Application Process
 Had a Phone Screen then was called onsite. 1
Interview
Asked me to write all code for design and implementation for my idea of the C++
string class. Wrote code for about 1hr 15 mins. Then he was satisified and asked
me to stop.
2nd inteview was with Team Leader. He intoduced the group to me and the work
they do. Then asked me lots of COM related questions. Platform Invoking. Calling
unmanaged code from managed code. Why would one want to use COM against C#
and vice versa.
Asked me to write a couple of functions. One took a function pointer, checked the
process Id of the calling process. Check if the process was alive at specific intervals,
if yes then invoke the function (pointed by the FP) otherwise return.

Second function would take a request from the process to stop the first function.
Was asked to design my own data structure and had to show it works with large no
of processes. Had to write test cases for it.
Copy a Linked List, and delete all even data from the Linked List.
Delete a node from a binary tree and balance it. Had to write code for the former
and had to explain the latter.
Then he gave me a Binary tree with each node having a pointer to its parent. Asked
me to write code for finding the Inorder Succesor. 7
Testing of all the functions above.
Name: Kunal Chopra (11.8.2005)
Position: SDET
Job Type: Full Time
Division: don't know yet
Status: First interview - hope to get another one!
Application Process
i put my resume up somewhere. Have no idea how microsoft got hold of it. I got an
email rom recruiter.
Interview
Background - what do you do? what positions interest you etc?
given a string - separate out the words of the string. put the words in a DS of your
choice? 3
What advantage woudl u get with a linked list over an array in this case? 1
Test this function?
how do you go about deciding what to automate or not?
any questions?
Name: Samba (12.18.2005)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Fulltime
Division: Windows
Status: rejected
Application Process
how do you verify if a given tree is a binary search tree 27
given a linked list of characters find if the string is a palindrome. Do not use any
extra memory. My solution included using recursion/ stack but he said that would
mean using extra memory. The other solution was to use an n-squared loop. 10
Right now wondering why I did not get to move to next rounds of interview though
I had answered both the above questions. Perhaps I was too slow. 11
Name: Saurav (7.25.2005)
Position: SDET3
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Automative Business Unit
Status: Received Offer
Interview
Write a function to use up a user given percentage of free memory in a system.
Had to optimise for performance. Write test cases for the above. I could assume
any suitable API that was there. By the way it was for an embedded chip.
Write a function to merge two sorted linked list in a sorted order. Test it. 5
Asked me about projects on my resume. To the minutest detail possible. 3
Asked me to test an API they had developed. It was by the test lead. Coincidentally
I gave him the exact test cases that he had come up with :). 3
Then had an interview with PM. All general resume questions and told me a lot
about the team. Also told me if I received the offer I would be responsible for
developing the platform SDK as well as testing it.
Name: Jack (2.27.2006)
Position: Program Manager/Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Software
Status: Pending
Application Process
Sent resume through MonsterTrak. Contacted by recruiter.
Comments
They haven't gotten back to me for 1.5 weeks. I emailed the recruiter twice and got
a please hold response.
Interview
Draw a basic ER diagram for Netflix.
Write a function that sums & returns the digits of an unsigned integer. 4
What is your passion? I said the future and went into history(planes,Ford Model-
T,etc.), quarks, and a vision of the future.
Asked when and how I used UML.
Told me to describe one of my personal projects.
Name: Khoa (3.5.2006)
Position: Internship
Job Type:
Division:
Status:
Interview
-Add numbers in base n
Given a chunk of memory
1. Implement malloc.
2. Implement free. 1
A disk is partioned into two hemispheres colored in black and white and the disk is
rotating.By appropriate positioning of sensors (A sensor can read the disk near it as
black or white) we need to find the direction of the motion of the disk. 1
Name: Henrick (3.7.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: fulltime
Division: avalon, directx
Status: pending
Comments
In terms of tech skills, #1 priority should be linkedlist/binary tree.
Make sure you have time to memorize the code for it.
Do not start coding immediately. Think about it, draw some pics.
Try to talk as you code, but some get annoyed if you talk too much without coding.
If you get stuck, you could say "hm, we're having fun aren't we..." and just say out
all your ideas.
Its ok to ask for hints.
Check the return value from malloc() to ensure that there was sufficient memory.

Interview
Why do you want to work at Microsoft?
Why do you want to be a SDET? (you need a strong answer for this. it'll be asked a
LOT)
Describe a project you've done. (be passionate)
Given a consecutive list of numbers from a to b, one number is removed.
The list is then scrambled. Find the missing number.
int find(int a, int b, int *array);
hint: sum(1 to n) is n(n+1)/2
using the same logic, sum(a to b) is (b-a)/2 * (b+a) 7
Give an algorithm to find the convex hull.
Given a tree such that each node has a child and sibling, find a node in the tree.
Prioritize the search by level (ie., check all siblings before children).
Hint: use a queue 3
Test a bottle of soysauce.
Hint: Test these categories:
Accessibility - accessibility, platform
Robust - stress, load
Operation - acceptance, performance, boundary
Security - security/safety
Test this function: void setTime(LPFunc func, Time t);
func is a functionpointer which will be invoked, passing in t as a parameter. 2
Write code to find the dot product and cross product.
Given 3 points on plane and a point in space, find the distance between the point
and the plane.
Find the location of the point projected to the plane. 2
Two robots are each standing on a beacon, on a line of infinite length.
They both execute the same code. Write the code to have them collide.
Only use these commands:
SKIPNB - skip the next line of code if not on a beacon
MVR - move right one step
MVL - movel eft one step
JMP - goto label in the code
hint: have both robots move to the right in a loop. if a robot passes a beacon,
double its speed. 3
Name: Henrick (3.8.2006)
Position:
Job Type:
Division:
Status:
Interview
crapload of microsoft questions. go get em tiger!
http://www.cse.ucsd.edu/~hshyu/microsoft.txt 3
Name: (3.23.2006)
Position: Program Manager
Job Type: Internship
Division: BPI & Connected Framework
Status: Declined
Application Process
Group related Questions
How would you test a Factorial program from that took inputs from 1-1000 2
Interview
Construct a Binary tree in which each node has n children
Construct a singly linked list head to tail
Construct a sinlgy linked list tail to head
Insert a node in a doubly linked list
Design an alarm clock for the blind
OOP questions
Multi Threading questions
Interview
Past Experiences
What groups would you like to work for?
Reverse a singly linked list
Design an interface for a multimedia library
Name: Payal Chakravarty (3.23.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: Internship
Division: msn.com portal
Status: Offer received..... yet to decide
Application Process
University Career Fair
Telephonic interview and then on site interview 1
Interview
Write code to reverse the words of a sentence and not the sentence itself eg:
Input: a quick brown fox
Output:a kciuq nworb xof
Test the code
Now what if there is a punctuation mark like a quick, brown fox ...we still want the
output to be a kciuq, nworb xof and not a ,kciuq nworb xof
What if the developer did not want to fix this bug since it is not there in the
specs...what would you do? 5
Write code to shuffle a list of songs randomly and return the shuffled list 1
Puzzle: You have a chess board and you chop off two diaognally opposite corners.
So initially the chess board had 64 squares, now it has 62.
Now you are given 31 dominoes, each dominoe can occupy two squares of a chess
board...arrange the dominoes to occupy the chess board squares 11
Write code to delete a node from a linked list. Write test cases for the code you
have written 1
 You have a singly linked list say 1->2->3->4->5 and you have no access to its
head pointer. But you have access to another pointer which points to the node 3.
How would you delete node 3 and get the output at 1->2->4->5. Remember its a
singly linked list 19
More behavorial questions and situational questions 1
Hands on testing: test msn entertainment web page 1
Name: xyz (4.21.2006)
Position:
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Application Process
Give a data structure and algorithm which can do push(), pop(), extract_min() in
O(1) time. 16
Name: "P" (5.1.2006)
Position: SDE/T
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Accepted
Application Process
Que 1: Reverse a string. Ref: Prgramming Interviews Exposed 2
Que 2: An integer array of size 1000, contains numbers ranging from 0-999. Each
number occurs only once in the array. One of the slots in this array is empty. Find
the number that is missing. Hint: sum of first n natural numbers 1
Que 3: Testing Question:- How will you test a "finger print reader" of a Laptop?
6
Que 4: Find whether a linked List is Circular or not?
Que 5: Find the center node of a Linked List? 6
Que 6: They showed me some of the MS applications on the desktop, and asked me
to design the test cases for 'em. I will recommend that you see what apps your
groups design and just have a feel of 'em and test cases you may design for 'em.

Que 7: Lots of questions on RESUME.

Advice: Just go there and be yourself. Do not get carried away by M$ tag. Its easy
and simple. (rest is on luck).... 2
Que 8: You have two files F1 and F2. F1 is of size x TB and F2 is of size 100x TB. F1
has records of type, (id, address) and F2 has records of type (id, paycheck_no). In
F1, all the records have unique "id" no. In F2, there may be multiple records with
same "id" no. Each of the "id" in F2 appears in F1. Combine the two files, F1 and F2
into F3, with records like == (id, address, paycheck_no), where ids can again be
similar for two records. Obviously, the No_Of_Records(F3) is going to be equal to
No_Of_Records(F2).
Catch: Efficisncy is all they are interested in! 8
Que 9: Compare and Contrast search in Array and a Linked List? Which will you
choose and depending on what criteria? What about B Trees? 1
Name: Altaf Al-Amin (5.3.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Rejected
Comments
 I think I performed well in interview, I answered all her questions and I think they
were correct.... But last night I got email describing that Currently they dont have
any appropriate position for me , will consider me in next 6 or 12 months :( ..... I
m shocked .... I was expecting Call for another interview ... Dont know why they
reject :( Either I was not upto their mark or positions are not appropriate for me :)
... Still Wondering ... 5
Interview
You are short of time and you have to do testing, What will be your strategy?
Answer : First of all i will find out all the most commonly use case scenerios and will
come up with the list of operations which are most commonly used. For eg. Login is
used in every case. Then will test for all inputs and outputs. Will Check
performance, throughput and response time. Will check for the Boundary
Conditions. Will check that whether the functionality is giving desired result. Will do
walk through of whole application to test the integration among different modules.
5
Giving Two Strings, Find out whether they are Anagrams or not?
Answer : I gave my answer in following PseudoCode
- If (string 1 == null || string2 == null ) then return false;
- if string1.length != string2.length then return false;
- Sort String1 and String2 in Lexographical Order (Alphabetical Order), If they both
are anagrams (i-e if they both are made up of the same characters) they will
become same after sorting.
- if SortedString1 == SortedString2 then return true else false; 20
Define Test Cases for this Anagram Checking Function. 5
Name: blue (6.20.2006)
Position: software engineer
Job Type: full-time
Division:
Status:
Interview
Given a circular linked list where the length of the stem can be arbitrary (the shape
of the list can be like number 6). What is the size of the list? 4
3136=8
Add operators (only + - * /), parentheses, etc. to the expression above to make the
equality true. 6
Name: Alex (7.11.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: fulltime
Division: RTC/UCG
Status: Reject, reason: convoluted code
Application Process
The screening question seemed simple - implement a function to count the number
of 4-connected regions of black color in a 20x20 pixel monochrome image. That is,
implement a function of prototype:

int GetNrBlackRegions(...) { ... }

The guy expressly mentioned not to worry about efficiency, so I chose a recursive
implementation for its elegance right off the bat, and refactored the task into three
more functions:
1) "point *findSeed(int B[IMAGESIZE][IMAGESIZE])" - to find a next available pixel
that has not been processed to start growing a region from it.
 2) "void fillRegion(point *seed, int B[IMAGESIZE][IMAGESIZE])" - to recursively
check the color of neighbors of the seed point and them as processed
3) "bool valid(point P)" - to check if a given point is within the image grid 20x20
when checking neghboring pixel colors
and the driver routine:

4) "int GetNrBlackRegions(int B[IMAGESIZE][IMAGESIZE])" - that would do a 3 line

loop of finding a seed point, filling a region starting from it, and incrementing the
number of regions found. The loop ends when no more seeds can be found, that is,
when all regions have been counted.
And that was given a verdict of being a "convoluted code", whereas to me it
seemed like every function had a clear a simple purpose with no tricks and hacks. I
guess I do not think the Microsoft want their programmers to think - or they just
hate recursive implementations :-)

Anyway - learn from that, do not write convoluted code :)

Name: MK (7.15.2006)
Position: Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Windows Live
Status:
Interview
What is an HTTP redirect?
What is REST (Representational State Transfer)? What are the fundamental
principles?
-Is RPC an example of REST?
-Can someone use the principles of REST over SOAP?
What is consistent hashing?
What data structure would you use if you were asked to find the top 10 most
frequent words in a file? Assume that you have a file parser that has a
GetNextWord() API.
What is a virtual method?
Assume that you are working on a small device which has a CPU with no MMU
(Memory Management Unit) and a limited amount of memory (1M). We want to be
able to run apps on the device that may need more than 1M throughout their
execution, although they never need more than 1M at any particular instant. We
are in control of the operating system running on the device as well as all tools,
compilers, linkers, etc. Discuss ideas on implementing a virtual memory
management system on the machine. 2
Name: Wildcat (7.21.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Rejected because of my "brute force" approach while coding
Application Process
Applied @ MS Careers but ...
... got the call when a friend of mine forwarded my resume :)
Comments
Every person and his/her actions is unique and would help them to succeed. So
rather than stating the obvious, let me concentrate on things I learnt after this
interview... might come in handy for people who interview with the same people or
 group after me ;)
Always learn both from your interviewers and your mistakes in the prior round.
Remember that your next interviewer is going to concentrate on your weakness
from previous round and if your previous interviewer has mentioned a few tips for
you to correct yourself, the next round is your chance :)
If the interviewer is trying to understand your work from your resume and is finding
it difficult to get a grasp of it despite you repeating it in several different ways, DO
NOT PANIC. This is true even if the interviewer expresses some form of displeasure.
Try using simple terms when explaining and if there is a specific question, address
that separetely; if you need to cover more grounds to explain, do so but always
come back to the question.
Listen to "what is given" before you attempt to write even the pseudo code.
Remember that even the most common question, that almost immediately brings a
smile to your face, may contain some extra detail that you "might" miss.
While it is ok to correct your own mistakes when you are writing the pseudo code or
even describing your approach, remember that sometimes, you might score by
giving the most optimal answer in a considerable amount of time. In other words, if
you know you have a solution of a question, DO NOT jump on that immediately.
Take your time and ensure that your solution is optimal (atleast to some extent).

IF your recruiter IS friendly enough (like mine was), he/she should go over the +
and - of your interview with him/her (Level I). Be sure to remember these "tips" as
they really are very handy.
Interview
OO questions: Polymorphism, Inheritance, Encapsulation
Adding and deleting nodes in a circularly doubly linked list
Design test cases for the same
HR based questions: Why MS; Why testing
Qualities of a good tester
Interview
RECRUITER INTERVIEW
1. Resume based questions
2. HR based: Have you been in a situation ... Give me an instance ... If you had ...
3. What is your passion
4. Information: So, your day is going be ...
INTERVIEWER I
1. Describe a situation ... So, what did you do to ... how did you handle ...type
questions
2. Detect whether or not a given # is a prime # (Recall my comments about giving
the most optimal solution here rather than jumping into one)
3. Test this (hands me a white board eraser)
INTERVIEWER 2 (Lunch interview)
1. Explain your current work; clarifications about specific segment of my current
project (This was not a happy outing!)
2. Insert an element into a doubly linked list, given that you have a global tail
(Recall my comments about sometimes a common question might have an extra
piece of information). Strangely enough, the interviewer was picky about me
omitting semi-colons in my code!
3. Convert the linked list you just created into array elements. Strangely enough,
the interviewer insisted that a[10] does NOT create memory and "malloc" had to be
mentioned, explicitly! (Not a happy outing here, again) 1
 INTERVIWER III
1. Questions about the previous versions of the product the group I was
interviewing for had developed - what I liked and what I did not (I feel comfortable
not revelaing this). Word of advice: Know the group you are interviewing with. I
did, and it did com in handy
2. Determine the last occurance of a particular character, given a sentence of words
(Recall: do not jumpt to a solution, ensure it is optimal)
3. Given a website with a textbox and a sumbit button. Type in any webURL to
display an ad on MSN homepage, if it is not already present. Test this. 1
Name: Victor (1.20.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Windows Media Player
Status: Pending
Comments
Please discuss the answers for the behavioural questions too as they are equally
important and they are the ones which keeps the interview lively.
Interview
Please tell me about your college background and about yourself?
Why do you want to work at Microsoft, How can you say Microsoft as your best
place to work, and basically WHY MICROSOFT??? 3
Tell me about one of the best challenging projects that you have done?? Also tell
me about the critical situation that you came accross technically and how did you
fix it??
How can you rate C++ and Java out of 10??
Please write a function to reverse the Linked List in the language that you are
comfortable with.
Please list the cases to test your function. 2
How can you improve your test case, tell me the test case in best time and space
complexity.
If you are hired, where do you stand after 2-3 years?? Do you have any goals to
achieve??
Name: Kunal Chopra (1.26.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: Full TIME
Division: USer Experience and Document Life Cycle - both in Microsoft Office Shared
Services
Status: Received offers from both groups
Application Process
Kindly read my interview experience here -

http://choprakunal.blogspot.com/ 13
Wish all of you the best of luck!!!!
Name: Jack Sparrow (8.9.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Confidential
Status: Accepted
Application Process
General Resume Questions, screening questions, some HR type questions such as
describe a typical work day, describe a situation when you tackled a difficult
 problem, tell me how well do you work in a team, etc.
Questions about multi threaded programming
Asked to technically describe the product of my current company, its clients vendors
etc.
Describe your role in your current team
Find the center element of a linked list with a single pass
What are mutexes and semaphores
some questions on hashing. given an example and asked if a collidsion would occur
or not
Interview
Questions on low level networking, how packets are ordered, how are headers
used, how are packets fragmented, how do broadcasts work. Also some questions
on Client/Server Communication
Write a function that returns a running average everytime it get called. Make
provisions for multiple processes to call this function.
Asked to write exhaustive test cases for the above code fragment
Interview
Lots of resume related questions, going deep into every project.
Given a doubly linked circular linked list and a pointer to any node and a number
'n'. Starting from the given node, keep on deleting the "nth" node till one node
remains. Return a pointer to that node. 1
Given a singly linked list, delete the kth node from the end. Optimize your code.
2
Given specific scenarios about the product the group was working on. Asked how I
would test it.
Token a string on the basis if a given delimiter.
e.g S is the base string and D is the delimiter (could be a sequence of any valid
chars)
S = ["who is the man who saw the eagle today went the wrong way?"]
D = ["the"]
Result = ["who is ", " man who saw ", " eagle today went ", " wrong way?"]
Asked to thoroughly test a given windows form.
Very detailed questions on all projects mentioned in my resume. Design level and
implementation level questions on all projects.
Asked a lot of questions on my Thesis. Asked about the implementation, the
performance issuses and how I would scale it.
Design a web crawler.
Write code to find the largest sub-sequence sum in a list of integers (+ve as well as
-ve)
Name: Programmer (8.20.2006)
Position: FullTime
Job Type: FullTime
Division: Applications Programmer
Status:
Interview
#1 There is a linked list. The last node could point back to any node in the list
(including the head). Find the node in the list to which the last node points. Or in
other words at which node does the circular linked list start.
#2 Number are generated randomly and stored in an array. Write a program to find
the median value of the array as and as new numbers are generated. Improve your
 solution.
#3 There is an array of ‘n’ numbers. Given a number ‘m’, find if there are two
numbers in the array that sum up to ‘m’. Obbviosuly improve the solution.
#4 There is an array of ‘n’ integers. Write a function to find the largest number? Do
it in one iteration? Now in the same pass also find the 2nd largest number.
#5 There are two sentences. Find the common words in the two sentences.
#6 Design an explaing an algrothim to find the nearest gas-staion from any location
in the city/block.
#7 Write a program to find the column's value of a given column from MS Excel.
[Ex: - A = 1; B =2, … Z=26, AA =27 and so on]
#8 Compare Linked List versus ArrayList.
#9 Design a random number generator such that it selects ‘m’ random numbers
from an unsorted array of ‘n’ elements, where each element has equal probability of

being picked. A number picked cannot be chosen again. 1

#10 There is a list of Customers and another list of Customers who paid. Find the
list of Customers who did not pay? What Data Structure would you use ? Why ?
Could you Improve your solution ?
Name: Programmer (8.20.2006)
Position: FullTime
Job Type: FullTime
Division: Applications Programmer
Status:
Interview
#1 There is a linked list. The last node could point back to any node in the list
(including the head). Find the node in the list to which the last node points. Or in
other words at which node does the circular linked list start.
#2 Number are generated randomly and stored in an array. Write a program to find
the median value of the array as and as new numbers are generated. Improve your
solution.
#3 There is an array of ‘n’ numbers. Given a number ‘m’, find if there are two
numbers in the array that sum up to ‘m’. Obbviosuly improve the solution.
#4 There is an array of ‘n’ integers. Write a function to find the largest number? Do
it in one iteration? Now in the same pass also find the 2nd largest number.
#5 There are two sentences. Find the common words in the two sentences.
#6 Design an explaing an algrothim to find the nearest gas-staion from any location
in the city/block.
#7 Write a program to find the column's value of a given column from MS Excel.
[Ex: - A = 1; B =2, … Z=26, AA =27 and so on]
#8 Compare Linked List versus ArrayList.
#9 Design a random number generator such that it selects ‘m’ random numbers
from an unsorted array of ‘n’ elements, where each element has equal probability of

being picked. A number picked cannot be chosen again.

#10 There is a list of Customers and another list of Customers who paid. Find the
list of Customers who did not pay? What Data Structure would you use ? Why ?
Could you Improve your solution ?
Name: Anonymous (8.28.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: FT
Division:
Status: Unknown
Application Process
Submitted resume online at Microsoft Career website
Got a call from Hiring Manager/Team Leader
Setup time for phone interview
Comments
Interviewer gave only first name.
No contact from HR person prior to or post interview.
Interviewer was not forthcoming with details on the position or the group. Had to
literally pry it out of him after the interview.
Interviewer was helpful during the interview with subtle hints but the quality of the
connection was bad. As a result, communication suffered.
Candidate has prior .NET programming experience.
Interview
Explain garbage collection in C#
What do virtual destructors in C++ achieve?
How do you handle unmanaged code in .NET?
Given a new switch /x to the DIR command in DOS. Write a program that will take
in this command and then sort the files in a folder by the first word in the first line
of the file.
So if file A has "Beginning" as the first word in the first line and file B has "After",
the sort order will be file A then file B. (I would be interested in hearing different
solutions on this question in particular) 2
Why a testing position?
Why Microsoft?
Name: JustGot2Offers (3.31.2006)
Position:
Job Type:
Division:
Status:
Interview
Write a class with static/non-static data member, static/non-static/virtual, draw the
object model
Write permutation function, recursive/non-recursive 4
reverse double link (improve the algorithm with no additional memory, no
redundant computation) 1
given a directed graph with multiple nodes, design the algorithm to find out
whether there is a route between node_a to node_b 12
Name: Sach (Sachin) (4.22.2006)
Position: SDET
Job Type: Full TIme
Division: Communication Platform Services ( MSN Messenger) and MAX(confidential)
Status: Received Offer ( MSN Messenger)
Interview
1) How will you have a truly random shuffle of a pack of cards? 2
2) How will you find the efficiency of your shuffle? 1
3) How will you remove duplicates from a sorted array? 1
Interview
 Q) Imagine u have an unbalanced binary search tree. Now make a linked list of all
the nodes at every depth(level) of the tree.
Assume every node along with a left and a right pointer also has a next pointer. To
make the linked list inside the binary tree for every level,
the next pointer of the first node at every depth should point to the next node at
the same depth in the tree and so on for the other nodes.
What is the complexity of your algorithm. Improve the efficiency.Code the algorithm
and then thoroughly test it? 20
Q) Lot of situation handling questions.(around 9 OR 10)
Code to remove duplicates from an UNSORTED linked list. Find as many solutions
as possible.(go from O(n2) solution to a O(n) solution)
Lets say a temporary buffer is not allowed. Can u better the O(n2) solution. FInd as
many test cases as possible. 4
Q) Lets say you have a disk of size N with N blocks. Every block stores part of a file.
Every file starts from a single block.
The block size is not enough to store a file. Every block has a used/unused bit and a
pointer to the next block in the disk which will store the next part of the file
and so on. A block which stores the end of a file points to null. Also a block whose
unused bit is 0 doesnt point to anything and is not pointed to by any block.
Now u have an index of files with filename as index and the value as the first block
in which the file starts.Lets says u somehow lose these indices and values.
How will you find an efficient algorithm to recreate this index structure with values.
You can use any filenames while creating the indices.
(While solving one shld think of cases where the file starts at block 4 which points
to 1 then to 2 and ends at 3) 6
Q) Test a fibnoacci series program for undefined integer sizes without using a
integers maximum size in the program.
Q) Find as many solutions as you can to remove a duplicate integer from an
unordered set of integers from 1 to 100.
Name: P (8.19.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: Full Time
Division: NA
Status: NA
Interview
Write and algorithm to implement a Queue using 2 Stacks and write test cases for
it.
Prove that the number between any two twin primes is always divisible by 6.
If a 2-d matrix were to be represented in row-major order and column-major
order, what would be the corresponding index given the indices of the 2-d
matrix? 5
Given the path to 2 directories (say P1 and P2) in the file system write an algorithm
to move the directory denoted by P2 to P1.
Given a sorted (non-decreasing order) array, write an algorithm to create a binary
tree with minimal height. Do this in O(n). 4
Name: bearlover (7.7.2006)
Position: SDE
Job Type: phone interview
Division:
Status:
Interview
 The question I got is: given two leave nodes in a Binary Tree (Not Binary search
tree), determine the first common ancestor of these two nodes. 1
Name: (7.10.2006)
Position: Program Manager
Job Type: FT
Division: Sharepoint Server / Microsoft Office
Status: Pending
Application Process
Phone Interview (PI): Standard recruiter get to know you questions then she asked
me to design a kitchen for a house that I have never been in, couldn't see
PI: If I knew that another company was going to be releasing software very similar
to the project that I was working on two months prior to when my team was
suppose to ship how would I deal with that?
PI: How would you tell a developer that the code they've been working on the past
6 months was not going to ship with the product?
PI: How do I learn about new technologies
Onsite Interview (OI): Invited to the Redmond campus to interview for the Program
Manager position on the Sharepoint team
OI: Interview #1 - You work for NASA and need to procure PC's to be put on the
space shuttle. How do you go about this?
OI: Design an alarm clock that will be standardized throughout the United States

OI: What is the most difficult sitution you've had to deal with at work
OI: Have you ever had to stand alone on a decision that you've made? How do you
motivate people
OI: How can you make sure that people going to the MS Office website are happy?
No, this is not a joke...

Design an elevator for a forty story building

Write code that will color in a blob which was outlined in the +,+ are of a coordinate
system

[top]

Microstrategy

Name: Jack (3.28.2006)

Position: Software Quality Engineer
Job Type: Full time
Division: Software
Status:
Application Process
Submitted resume to multiple positions to get response. On-campus interview.
Comments
Practice interview.
I inquired how creative the company is and the manager told me they have their
own "platform." Using this platform, they use MS Office as an adapter for
manipulating data.
 Generally Business Intelligence to create solutions for other companies.
Doesn't seem like a place where innovation flows. Manager described most projects
as recreating something that already exists.
They treat an entry-level as a pure coder. Manager told me it took him about 6 yrs
to get promoted.
They have about 80 tech support engineers.
Interview
All behavorial questions such as describe yourself.

[top]

Morgan Stanley

Name: dantheman82 (8.15.2006)

Position: Software Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: IT Training Program, NYC
Status: First, Second Round, no offer
Application Process
They came by my school, I had an on-campus interview scheduled. I then was
accepted to go to their NYC office to have a second round of interviews. Sometime
later, I was rejected...
Interview
[Round 1] They may ask from a language you don’t know about to see if you can
do something. For example, I was asked about working with a hash table in PERL
even though I really wasn’t familiar with it then. He supplied some basic syntax and
asked what a statement would do.
[Round 2] There will generally be more nit-picky syntactical questions from the
languages you do know.
[Round 2] For those who use/like C++, they can tend to like to ask you to describe
the minute differences between C and C++ at a low
[Round 2] You will likely be coding on the board in your preferred language in front
of someone who has a pretty good understanding of that language. I was asked to
code up a Fibonacci function with the one constraint being that I couldn’t write a
recursive function
[Round 2] {behavioral} There was a group project where you work together with
others with time constraints in order to build something out of straws and pins. You
then present it complete with posters.
[Round 2] {algorithm} There was a timed exercise which had patterns (and
shapes) where you had to determine the next in the sequence. It was basically a
bunch of logical puzzles to solve in 30-60 minutes (not sure the exact amount of
time).
Name: G (8.10.2006)
Position: Developer
Job Type: Full Time
Division: MSIS IT
Status: Verbal success communited, negotiations on
Application Process
Had 10 rounds of interviews, 5 being telephonic and 5 on-site
 1 hour of technical, basically checking concepts, OOAD, Java, Database, General
Languages. Most interesting question was being asked to implement a cache in
java.
Followed by 4 interviews with managers up to 4 levels above the position. These
were mostly to check my fitment. Was asked situational questions and was given a
lot of info on the role. 3
I flew onsite.
Started with 1 hour of technical. A lot of stress on my current project. This was
almost a repetition of the first technical I had.
HR fitment round
Another hour of technical. Was queried a lot on DBMS and DBMS performance when
DBMS is not my core expertise at all. Was quizzed a bit on generics in Java 1.5.
Basically the interviewer wanted to hear the compile time check for Generics.
Had a session with the director. Again fitment, compensation, etc discussion
A chat with the MD of MSIS IT. In the process of these interviews i have met
everyone I would be working with if I join.

[top]

Motorola

Name: Khoa (1.31.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Received Offer
Application Process
I must have submitted my resume 1 year ago. 2
Interview
Asked about Java OOP.
Design Patterns - Talked about Singleton, Observer, Abstract Factory.. more
Some behavior questions.
Name: DM (4.29.2006)
Position: sw engg
Job Type: Full Time
Division: Mobile Devices Division
Status: Pending
Comments
Fastest way (O(n)) of finding 10000 larest integers in a set of 10 million values
1

[top]

Moyer Group

Name: Jack (3.17.2006)

Position: Application Developer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Web Apps
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted resume. Invited on-site.
Comments
Make heavy use of FileMaker.
Growing company. Currently has 12 employees who telecommute.
Small office space.
I proposed to add a new position of Soft Eng and volunteered to be the lead soft
eng. He then asked me to describe this position.
Told me the environment gets kind of loud during the week.
Interview
Mostly behavorial questions on work/technical experience.
Demoed some of their work involving FileMaker.
Asked me what I did with SQL. What DBs I've worked with.

[top]

National Instruments

Name: Khoa (7.17.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status:
Interview
Given a binary tree of integers, What is the average? average = sum/count. What if
the binary tree has a loop?
Given a binary tree where each node's value is a COLOR. A clump is formed when
more than 3 COLORS are adjacent to each other. Return the total number of clumps
in a binary tree.

[top]

North American Medical

Name: Jack (1.16.2006)

Position: Software Programmer
Job Type: Part Time
Division: Engineering
Status: Rejected
Application Process
Phone Interview.
Do you have experience with Windows programming? Visual C++?
What is your experience with GUI programming in non-web environment?
Comments
Told them I have no problem with learning new technology. The guy paused for a
moments and then said goodbye.

[top]

NVIDIA

Name: KHOA (2.4.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status:
Application Process
On campus interview.
Interview
What does the keyword volatile mean in C? 4
What's wrong with this code:
unsigned int i;
for (i = 100; i <= 0; --i)
printf("%d\n",i); 6
Describe in english what this code do?
( (n & (n-1)) == 0) 7
Write atoi(const char * chr) 4
Explain Virtual Memory. What is the TLB? 1
Count the number of ON bits in an integer. 1
Name: anon (5.8.2006)
Position:
Job Type: intern
Division: linux graphics software engineer
Status:
Application Process
given an unsigned byte,write a routine to flip the adjacent bits i.e bit 1 & 2 are
interchanged ...3&4 are interchanged and soo on.. 12
Name: anon (5.8.2006)
Position:
Job Type: intern
Division: linux graphics software engineer
Status:
Application Process
given an unsigned byte,write a routine to flip the adjacent bits i.e bit 1 & 2 are
interchanged ...3&4 are interchanged and soo on..
Name: pavan (5.10.2006)
Position:
Job Type: intern
Division: linux graphics software
Status: reject
Application Process
Ist round kinda went well, he asked abt c keywords, bit operators,coding atoi, and a
 bit of double buffers in opengl.
the second round was the nightmare!!! no where in my resume i mentioned abt
OpenGL and in the interview i clearly told him that i never coded in opengl but the
guy simply wudnt listen...he would explain the concepts over the phone and then
kept on asking abt depth buffers,clipping rectangles and some other stuff which i
never heard in my life!! 2
I was soooo damn frustrated that, i wanted to bang the phone but just controlled
myself.
Comments
my advice: understand all the basic concepts of OpenGL like double buffering,depth
buffers and then apply at nvidia.

[top]

Oracle

Name: Khoa (4.28.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Pending
Application Process
I submit my resume online and also through a recruiter. 8
Comments
All behavior questions.
Interview
Asked me my knowledge of J2EE.
more behavioral questions

[top]

other

Name: Chandan (2.2.2006)

Position: Architectural Engineer
Job Type: Intern
Division: Architecture
Status: Offer (see details below)
Application Process
Submitted resume to the HR recruiter at the Career Fair and to a direct contact
within the organization.
1st round:
Technical Phone Interview
Duration: 1 hour
The questions were concerned with manipulation of data using linked lists, arrays
and double pointers. The recruiter wrapped up the interview by asking a couple of
questions about my current research.
 2nd round:
Technical Phone Interview
Duration: 2 hours
There were lots of questions related to pipelining, cluster steering as well as
miscellaneous issues in micro-architecture.
HR Interview
Duration: 1 hour
'Twas pretty similar to an "as-app" interview at Amazon. Nothing to write home
about.
Comments
If you want to intern at nVidia (or ATi for that matter), be sure that you know how
a graphics card works. Terms like AGP, PCI-X, SLI etc. shouldn't be an unknown
entity.
Offer
$X/month, housing allowance of $y per month
The usual stuff like free car rental (or a one-time purchase of a bike), medical
insurance and other stuff.
Wanted a decision within 2 weeks, but (quite surprisingly!) agreed to give me an
extension of about a month.
Name: tryit (4.2.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: full time
Division:
Status:
Interview
Given a dictionary of millions of words, write a program to find the largest possible
rectangle of letters such that every row forms a word (reading left to right) and
every column forms a word (reading top to bottom).
Anyone got any ideas? 2
Name: (1.23.2006)
Position: programmer
Job Type: full time
Division:
Status:
Interview
Design a hash table to store phone #s. Your job is to write a hash function that has
a parameter username, and generate a key. Username is unique, length 5 and can
be A-Z, 0-9, space. Write a hash function that generate keys without collisions and
use minimum memory. 8
Name: Jack (3.28.2006)
Position: Software Quality Engineer
Job Type: Full time
Division: Software
Status:
Application Process
Submitted resume to multiple positions to get response. On-campus interview.
Comments
Practice interview.
I inquired how creative the company is and the manager told me they have their
own "platform." Using this platform, they use MS Office as an adapter for
manipulating data.
 Generally Business Intelligence to create solutions for other companies.
Doesn't seem like a place where innovation flows. Manager described most projects
as recreating something that already exists.
They treat an entry-level as a pure coder. Manager told me it took him about 6 yrs
to get promoted.
They have about 80 tech support engineers.
Interview
All behavorial questions such as describe yourself.

[top]

Oversee.net

Name: Jack (1.6.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: No response
Application Process
Sent resume. Received questionaire. 1
Given a number N generate a random list of numbers from 1 to N. Make your
solution efficient.
There is a turnpike with N cities numbered from 0 to N-1. Write a function that will
calculate the distance between any two cities.

Example:

City numbers: 0 1 2 3 4 5
Distances: 5 3 2 6 7

distance(1, 4) = 3 + 2 + 6 = 11
distance(3, 5) = 6 + 7 = 13

Imagine that this 'distance' function is being called millions and millions of times in
your program. Optimize your function to be as efficient as possible at run-time.
Assume that the list of cities and distances do not change after the program starts.
3
You are given N points in 2-dimensional space represented by coordinates (X, Y). N
can be a very large number (hundreds of millions). Write an algorithm to pick K
points that are closest to the origin (0, 0). K is much smaller than N (hundreds).
Assume that each of the N points is retrieved by an iterator function get_next_point
which returns a pair (X, Y) representing the point coordinates.
Place N queens on an N x N chessboard in such a way than none of them are able
to capture the others. Write a function, combinations(N), which would return the
number of possible combinations for any integer N. Assume N is between 4 and 12.
 Example: combinations(8) = 92

Method I used: rook polynomials.

Write a function that is given a string and that prints out all the possible
permutations of characters within the string. 4

[top]

Qualcomm

Name: Sach (4.4.2006)

Position: Software Engineer - protocol stacks
Job Type: Full TIme
Division:
Status: Pending
Interview
General questions about linked lists, binary trees, arrays, heaps ...advantages,
disadvantages, complexties, differences between each. 16
Questions on operating system concepts ike virtual memory, context switching,
semaphores etc
lots of questions straight from programming interviews exposed
a) detecting loops in a linked list
b) Different ways to find the no. of set bits in an integer(bitwise operators).
give names of some sorting algorithms. Also give their time complexities.
Three ants on different vertices of a triangle. All can walk on the sides of the
triangle. Find the probability of them colliding.(collision could be between any two
or all three).
Now find the same for n vertex polygon with n ants. 4
Write a function which uses malloc and returns a starting memory location which is
a multiple of 32.
Questions on stacks, memory allocation, storage classes etc.
Name: XXXX (7.31.2006)
Position: Audio Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Pending
Application Process
Applied online.
Phone interview (45 min), and then an onsite interview.(HR+4tech)
Interview
Phone:

write a program to reverse the bit representation of an integer

questions abt stack/heap/recursion etc.
Onsite:

reversing a doubly linked list

write a function to make a pointer point to a different object
how to check that a process doesnt access 'unauthorized' parts of the stack
 while(*p++=*s++); // and some discussion on this
some bit manipulations
general c questions: static, volatile, assert etc.
typedef a pointer to a function that takes two ints and returns a pointer to a char
how to write a value into some address - say in 0xabcd1234
write translator between a little endian and a big endian machine
design patterns
some general puzzle
binary tree traversal
find offset of a member variable in a structure, from the beginning of the structure
- write a macro

general OS concepts - scheduling, priorities etc.

stack / stack frame / context switching / process
how does a function return
measures to be taken so that stack is not overrun etc.
Name: Vidhya (7.6.2006)
Position: Software Developer Data Protocols
Job Type: Fulltime
Division:
Status: Pending
Application Process
Just got over with the Qualcomm phone interview.

The questions were basic C and data structures questions.

C Questions:
Asked what are const,volatile,register,static keywords
Will this terminate: while (*a++ = *b++)
What is the difference between copy constructor and assignment operator?
What is pass by reference and pass by value? How do u do pass by reference in
C++?
What is a void pointer? and what does void func mean?
Data structures:
running time of linked list lookup operaion? how do u implement a linked list?
What is running time of has table look up?
How do you implement a hash table?
How does hash table achieve 0(1) lookup?
Some Networking questions about TCP/UDP
Name: Ravi (8.16.2006)
Position: Test Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: Pending
Application Process
Had a telephonic interview which lasted for around 30 mins.Questions were asked
basically on C#.Asked about one of my projects.There were no coding questions
asked.
What are events and delegates?
Asked something about web servies as it was used in my project.
 One question which took me some time was: Suppose u have a multiple form
(winform)application. How do u open up a second form from the code in first form.I
was thinking in terms of just create and object of the second form and call
form.showdialog. But he was expecting using invoke().Can ne1 say y shud u use
invoke and not showdialog?
Some more simple questions i dont remember. Waiting for a reply ..its been 2-3
weeks havent heard frm em. Do they usually take so much time?

[top]

Rebellion Research

Name: Jack (4.8.2006)

Position: Programmer/Mathematician
Job Type: Internship
Division: Finanace
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted quiz and resume.
Interview
Suppose that you have access to a file which contains the closing price for 10,000
stock tickers on each day over a period of 10 years. Suppose also that you must
create a component of a computer program which will be called thousands to
hundreds of thousands of times per day on many different days to:
(A) Retrieve the closing price associated with a given stock ticker for a given date.
(B) Iterate through all stock tickers that have price information available on a given
date. (C) Find the last date before a given date for which a given stock ticker had
closing price information available. What data structures would you use to organize
this stock information to best satisfy (A), (B) and (C)?

I mentioned BST & Hashtable.

Would you load all the stock information into memory at once, or format the data
before hand so that it could be read piece by piece from the hard drive as
information is requested?
Explain why you believe that the data structures you chose are the best ones for
this job.
Consider a purely probabilistic game with potential outcomes x1, x2, ..., xn (each of
which is a specified gain or loss of some number of dollars) which occur with the
probabilities p1, p2, ..., pn respectively (where, p1 + p2 + ... + pn = 1.0). Assume
that x1, x2, ..., xn and p1, p2, ..., pn are known. Theoretically speaking, how would
you define or measure the risk of playing this game?
Explain why your solution does a good job of capturing our intuitive notion 'risk',
and how it might be used in actual decision making.
Assuming that you could play this game at most one time, how would you decide
whether you would want to play it?
Assuming that you could play this game as many times as you liked, how would you
decide how many times to play it? NOTE: Though question 2 is central to much of
human activity, there is no single agreed upon solution to it. We are interested in
the reasoning that you undergo to arrive at a reasonable conclusion
Name: Jack (4.9.2006)
Position: Programmer/Mathematician
Job Type: Internship
Division: Finanace
Status: Rejected
Comments
4 employees looking to expand through ambitious projects.
Interview
E-mail reply from chief architect. Told me they weren't satisfied with my answers.
1
Constantly repeated that I wasn't articulate about my solutions.

[top]

Sabre Holdings

Name: Khoa (5.16.2005)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division:
Status: Rejected in the first round
Application Process
Applied via Erecruiting.
Interview
Java OOP questions.
How do I go about motivating my team?
Web services
More..

[top]

Sage Software

Name: Jack (3.17.2006)

Position: SW Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Accounting, R&D
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted resume.
Phone-screened by recruiter. Received technical quiz.
Comments
Bought about 6 other companies.
Parent company in UK.
Serve small-to-midsize businesses.
Interview
 Submitted tech quiz.
Q2. What is the difference between an Interface and an Abstract Class (e.g.,
between IFoo and Foo?)

// Interface
interface IFoo
{
void Bar();
}

// Abstract Class
abstract class Foo
{
abstract public void Bar();
}
Q3. How do you embed a special character (e.g., ‘{‘ ) inside a String.Format format
string? Please give an example.
Q4. Describe how a try..catch..finally construct works.
Q5. What is the StringBuilder class and why would you use it? 1
Q6. What is a static property? Give an example of why you would use one.
Q7. What are some of the potential pitfalls of boxing and unboxing?
Q8. Write a function that will return the 5th element from the tail of a singly linked
list and explain how you would test your solution.
Q9. Write code to implement a class for wrapping text stored in a file. You should
add enough functionality to the class to demonstrate your ability to design classes
with either the C++ or C# language.

The class should at least meet the following requirements:

1. The class should be named CPersistentString

2. A class instance should flush its string to a file before it dies.

3. The class should support at least the following operators: "=", "==", and "[ ]".

4. The class should include the following operations: GetLength(),

IsPalindrome(),Load(), Persist().

Feel free to add more than just the minimum requirements. You may use any
functions in the standard C library (for C++) or .NET framework (for C#) and you
may use a compiler to check your work.
Name: Jack (3.17.2006)
Position: SW Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Accounting, R&D
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted resume.
 Phone-screened by recruiter. Received technical quiz.
Comments
Bought about 6 other companies.
Parent company in UK.
Serve small-to-midsize businesses.
Interview
Submitted tech quiz.
Q2. What is the difference between an Interface and an Abstract Class (e.g.,
between IFoo and Foo?)

// Interface
interface IFoo
{
void Bar();
}

// Abstract Class
abstract class Foo
{
abstract public void Bar();
}
Q3. How do you embed a special character (e.g., ‘{‘ ) inside a String.Format format
string? Please give an example.
Q4. Describe how a try..catch..finally construct works.
Q5. What is the StringBuilder class and why would you use it?
Q6. What is a static property? Give an example of why you would use one.
Q7. What are some of the potential pitfalls of boxing and unboxing?
Q8. Write a function that will return the 5th element from the tail of a singly linked
list and explain how you would test your solution.
Q9.Write code to implement a class for wrapping text stored in a file. You should
add enough functionality to the class to demonstrate your ability to design classes
with either the C++ or C# language.

The class should at least meet the following requirements:

1.The class should be named CPersistentString

2.A class instance should flush its string to a file before it dies.
3.The class should support at least the following operators: "=", "==", and "[ ]".

4.The class should include the following operations: GetLength(),

IsPalindrome(),Load(), Persist().
Feel free to add more than just the minimum requirements. You may use any
functions in the standard C library (for C++) or .NET framework (for C#) and you
may use a compiler to check your work.
Name: Jack (3.17.2006)
Position: SW Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Accounting, R&D
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted resume.
 Phone-screened by recruiter. Received technical quiz.
Comments
Bought about 6 other companies.
Parent company in UK.
Serve small-to-midsize businesses.
Interview
Submitted tech quiz.
Q2.What is the difference between an Interface and an Abstract Class (e.g.,
between IFoo and Foo?)
// Interface
interface IFoo
{
void Bar();
}
// Abstract Class
abstract class Foo
{
abstract public void Bar();
}
Q3.How do you embed a special character (e.g., ‘{‘ ) inside a String.Format format
string? Please give an example.
Q4.Describe how a try..catch..finally construct works.
Q5.What is the StringBuilder class and why would you use it?
Q6.What is a static property? Give an example of why you would use one.
Q7.What are some of the potential pitfalls of boxing and unboxing?
Q8.Write a function that will return the 5th element from the tail of a singly linked
list and explain how you would test your solution.
Q9.Write code to implement a class for wrapping text stored in a file. You should
add enough functionality to the class to demonstrate your ability to design classes
with either the C++ or C# language.
The class should at least meet the following requirements:
1.The class should be named CPersistentString
2.A class instance should flush its string to a file before it dies.
3.The class should support at least the following operators: "=", "==", and "[ ]".
4.The class should include the following operations: GetLength(),
IsPalindrome(),Load(), Persist().
Feel free to add more than just the minimum requirements. You may use any
functions in the standard C library (for C++) or .NET framework (for C#) and you
may use a compiler to check your work.
Name: Jack (3.17.2006)
Position: SW Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Accounting, R&D
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted resume.
Phone-screened by recruiter. Received technical quiz.
Comments
Bought about 6 other companies.
Parent company in UK.
 Serve small-to-midsize businesses.
Interview
Submitted tech quiz.
Q2.What is the difference between an Interface and an Abstract Class (e.g.,
between IFoo and Foo?)
// Interface
interface IFoo
{
void Bar();
}
// Abstract Class
abstract class Foo
{
abstract public void Bar();
}
Q3.How do you embed a special character (e.g., ‘{‘ ) inside a String.Format format
string? Please give an example.
Q4.Describe how a try..catch..finally construct works.
Q5.What is the StringBuilder class and why would you use it?
Q6.What is a static property? Give an example of why you would use one.
Q7.What are some of the potential pitfalls of boxing and unboxing?
Q8.Write a function that will return the 5th element from the tail of a singly linked
list and explain how you would test your solution.
Q9.Write code to implement a class for wrapping text stored in a file. You should
add enough functionality to the class to demonstrate your ability to design classes
with either the C++ or C# language.
The class should at least meet the following requirements:
1.The class should be named CPersistentString
2.A class instance should flush its string to a file before it dies.
3.The class should support at least the following operators: "=", "==", and "[ ]".
4.The class should include the following operations: GetLength(),
IsPalindrome(),Load(), Persist().

[top]

Tellabs

Name: Jack (4.20.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Multiple Departments
Status: Declined
Comments
Interview with developer. 2nd interviewer left me a message telling me to call him
till 5. I reached him on like the 4th try.
The position title is misleading. The interviewer told me the position is purely Web
Developer.
Seems like a quite disorganized company.
Interview
 Describe experience with Web Apps.
Describe courses taken.
A couple questions he responded, "I'm not the person to answer that."
Name: Jack (4.19.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Multiple departments
Status: Pending
Application Process
Submitted resume.
Comments
No housing subsidy.
Interview
Phone-screened by recruiter.
Describe experience with C++/Java.
Describe experience with Unix and Unix scripting.

[top]

USInternetworking

Name: Jack (3.31.2006)

Position: Technology Analyst
Job Type: Internship
Division: Software
Status:
Application Process
Submitted resume. Went to on-campus interview.
Comments
Nothing particularly interesting stood out about the company during the interview.
Generally they create solutions for clients.
I asked them about their weaknesses. The HR interviewer told me sometimes they
focus so much on clients they forget about the employees.
Utilize a distributed server architecture.
Mandatory paid vacation.
Some work is offshore.
Based on the description given of the company, a lack of creative encouragement.

Interview
Behavorial questions.
I asked most of the questions: group vacations, work schedule, environment, etc.

[top]

Vanu
Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status: 2 phone interviews, then turned down
Application Process
Applied at Career Fair
Followed up with recruiter
2 phone interviews
Comments
Very small company (~30 employees), spin off from MIT. They create technology
which allows several cell phone providers to share the same towers.
Interview
Explain a technical project in a non-technical way
Interview
Asked me to go through all of my summers at Microsoft and Apple and explain what
I did
How would I compare Apple and Microsoft
Asked me what the lead student ambassador position is and what I've done with it

[top]

VMWare Inc

Name: Khoa (1.11.2006)

Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: User Interface Group
Status: Make to 2nd round but choose not to continue
Application Process
Submitted my resume through career fair. 1
Comments
VMware, a spin off from Stanford, makes virtualization software. 1000+
employees.
1 hour technical interview.
Interview
Favorite project?
Some questions about MFC.
Gave the code for reversing a linked list. Asked me to identify all the bugs.
Gave me some C code for a compression algorithm. Identify bugs.
Name: Sudipta (2.10.2006)
Position: Development Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: Virtual Devices (Networking)
Status: Awaiting
Comments
Had two short initial phone screens where I was asked a few technical questions &
 my areas of interest 4
Basics like how many bits in an integer, what are the commands & linux & windows
for viewing system processes, what is the command to find the version of a linux
machine, what are callback functions, difference between processes & threads,
difference between structure & class, what is disk partitioning, how is it done on
linux & windows.
Interview
Phone interview lasted for an hour.
Was given C code for Base64 Encoding & asked to identify bugs in it.
Questions on topics related to the projects on my resume.
Name: Jack (2.27.2006)
Position: Software Engineer
Job Type: Internship
Division: VM engineering
Status: Rejected
Application Process
Applied via website.
Comments
What can I say? I'm not the "one"
Interview
Phone interview with senior engineer. Mostly behavorial questions such as "tell me
about yourself." Told me to elaborate on a specific project and why I used the tools
I've chosen.
I called the recruiter to get feedback. He told me 2 general reasons:
1. I didn't do my hwk and hence didn't know anything about VMware.
2. I mentioned tools from my personal project that weren't being used in the
company. 1

[top]

WebLinc

Name: Gayle Laakmann (4.4.2005)

Position: Software Development
Job Type: Part Time
Division:
Status: Accepted part time position
Application Process
Applied via Drexel Career Fair
Interviewed twice in Philadelphia where they're located
Interview
Pretty cool company - people are very young and fun. Fairly successful - have large
clients like Urban Outfitters, Speedo, Crayola
Free sodas, free beer on fridays
Offer
Received offer after 2 rounds of interviewing. Both rounds were questions about
experience. Nothing particularly technical.
 [top]

Yahoo

Name: cdsn (5.11.2006)

Position: Operations Engineer
Job Type: Full Time
Division:
Status:
Application Process
I've got an interview from Yahoo in a couple of days...it'll be great if anyone can
give any tips or suggestions on interview with Yahoo. There is not much info on
Yahoo interview on the web....Thanks in advance... 5