Posts Tagged: microsoft

Placement — 12 Comments
14
Sep 08

Weird Interview rejection reasons

Placement season has nearly ended and many people got their jobs (obviously). One thing which everyone will remember is the unusual reasons company HR’s give when they want to reject someone. I have seen and heard many people being rejected in front of me, only to give a thought what the company recruiters really require actually.

Cisco recruiters said

We wanted people who have hands on experience on real working technology and who can take up challenges. When you people get holidays, do some projects/internship after each semester break right after first year.

Means after each break, we wont go home instead get ourselves tortured in a corporation? Would any first year student get an internship? Would any company offer him? If you are so excited, why wont you provide to some students here?

Yahoo recruiters said

You are not upto the mark!

How is you mark rated? Upside down? Worser the performance, higher you get up on their scale?

Microsoft recruiters said

You were giving too much smile and showing formality. This is not a professional approach.

Next time when I enter your chamber for an interview, will greet you as “Good Afternoon a**hole“

College / Technical — 3 Comments
13
Sep 08

M$ at MIT

First of all congrats to Shivani Sugandha and Aman Arneja for getting selected ( or offered a post of FTE ) in Microsoft. The interview progress was very rigerous and only two out of 27 people who got shortlisted after the written exam were able to make it.

These two students deserved the offer, but what irked most was their attitude towards interviews. A guy called Ashwin P faced more than 8 hours of interview in total of 5 rounds. Guess! They said “Sorry”. WTF! If these people didnt have to take him, just say him Goodbye in the second ot third round itself. Another very shocking outcome was that of Ayush Sinha. I expected him to get through, but maybe the MS guys thought otherwise.

I met a Senior Test Manager of Visual Studio Team where I perused my internship. His name was Dinesh Bhat, though he didnt recognize me in the first instance, some minor hints made him go back two months and recollect the information. His weirdest reaction was when I said “Sir! Remember, you made the plan for movie Outing - Indiana Jones”.

Well, its time for party, booze and celebrations. Those who couldnt make it, its time to move on. Microsoft is not the only company where one can make his/her carreer.

Internship / Placement / Thoughts — 6 Comments
11
Aug 08

MNC Jobs == Cheap Labour Jobs ?

Before starting I would like to state that its a flame post, read it only if you can digest properly.

All my fellow readers might be knowing about the much hyped Microsoft internship which was offered to me last semester.I screwed up my academics (to some extent) to get this prestigious opportunity. What was the final outcome of it? Read on…..

When I arrived at the office, I was nearly taken away by the impressive building, the superb lifts, cokes and coffee machines. We had night cab drop and food allowance. Everything looked so impressive! Slowly I came to know that this India Dev Center is just a place where M$ dumps all its useless and crappy work which they think “The Redmond guys” should not handle at all. Its nothing but cheap labour !! We are paid CTC of say 9 lakhs, but look back a little. We are being underpaid badly and that too without an overtime pay. Isnt this cheap labour? (I repeat again) What work is being handled here? Visual Studio Tools, SMS UI, Wordpad UI and product experience groups. This may be daring work to some extent, but not at all core job from any angle. The whole Visual Studio is being build somewhere else, Wordpad is built somewhere else, just the UI testing is over here. IE is built at Redmond, but testing work is sent here. WTF!

I always had thought that India was one of the top countries when it comes to IT sector. Is it really true? Narayanmurthy had clearly said that until we improve out hardware proficiency, we cant advance at all, and I firmly stand by his statement. NASSCOM and all these Indian organization rely too much on foreign companies rather than starting their own business without external help. They don’t dare make M$ angry and this was the reason why they backed OOXML for Indian stand at ISO.

Again once I wondered why all big MNC’s choose India as their destination? They cite “Good Brains, Nice Workforce, Good English Speaking Professionals”. I agree with first and third but not with second. It should be remodelled “Nice Cheap Workforce”. We have lax labour laws in our own country and people are made to work hours and hours after office timings for completing their work. Can this happen in the US and European countries? I can only say that whatever the big MNC’s say, India and developing countries are nothing but a place to cut costs, cheap abundant labour makes it simpler. They would never go out of their slavish mentality and keep all their core development in top-secret centers which cannot be a developing country at any cost!

My last line is “Work for an MNC if you want, you would be lucky if you had freedom and got a prestigous work in real sense (not in sense of salary)”

Hyderabad / Internship / News — 4 Comments
25
Jul 08

“You are not up to the mark”

So Folks! Interview results are out! Kicked out in the first round itself, though am not surprised ( had performed badly). Well leave it, no point discussing the same thing. I was told that am “Not Upto the Mark” as per Microsoft standards.

I was supposed to give a demo at 2PM today in Conference Room about my work which I did for the last two months. The presentation was for around forty minutes out of which I presented for around half an hour and last ten minutes were left discussing about the various design issues. I had made a small power point presentation to make the show a bit lively hoping that it can add interest. I had thought of many things which I would be telling only to find my mentor picking up the questions and answering them.

When I came back to my machine, I tried writing a funky but proper “Last Day at Work” mail. This is what I had written.

Hi everybody,

I would like to inform all that today is my last day of work at MSIDC. I was working as an intern in this group.

I would like to thank each and every person for the love and affection which they have shown during all the eight weeks which made my stay a really memorable one. I am very excited to return back to college with a tag of being a MS Intern. This really counts.

I would like to wish all of you best of luck for your future and would surely love to be in contact even after this internship.

Briefly describing myself: Am a student at Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal , Karanataka. Well what more to say of academics? I have decent grades and good reputation, but what I felt was that grades don’t matter in life (personal experiences).

My personal e-mail ID is manishsinha27 {at} gmail  {dot} com .

Regards,

Manish Sinha

My mentor called me up in his chamber to brief about the review and say some parting words :D As he thinks my strength is that am Committed and Hard Working. These two words gave me a great shock! I never came to office before 12:30-1:00 in the afternoon and never reported him on time after completion of work. Another strength was that I “never crashed in the work which has been assigned and somehow finished it howsoever unusual it ought to be”. This I can agree to some extent, though its the thing which made me work patiently for last two months.

Now coming to weakness… “I don’t have communication skills!”. Okay! “I don’t test my code for all test cases and half of the time its not running even though the algorithm is quite good”.

I would be leaving for college tomorrow night. Its actualy a break journey from Hyderabad to Banaglore and from there to Mangalore. There is also a 10 hrs gap between both the trains, which time is quite difficult to pass. Going back to college, I would be sitting for most of the companies including Sungard which is coming on 28th-Monday, Cisco on 30th-Wednesday, Yahoo on 4th-Monday, Toshiba on 7th-Thursday and Philips Innovation on 11th-Monday. No! I have no intention to take all, this list is only for those which I have registered.

See you in Manipal soon. Now wish me a Happy Journey! :)

Hyderabad / Internship / News — No Comments
28
Jun 08

Billy’s Last Day as Full Time

This post is going to be quite short. Yesterday, Bill Gates worked last day as a full time employee at Microsoft. Bill,52 who is a Harvard dropout gave an hour departing speech. The speech was telecasted on screen here at office. People gathered in large numbers to watch, to listen how Gates built this kingdom.

Bill disclosed that one of the biggest turning points was defeating OS/2 which helped them push their own OS with full force in the market. Now windows has a mammoth share in OS market, followed by MACs and Linux. He even told how the worked at the earlier days. There are lots of videos floating out on the net, hope I don’t have to point you all to one of them. The purpose of blogging was to tell how it feels when a person of a company is leaving, especially when he had the Chairman post, more important when you work in that company even as a part time.

Coming to a bit off-topic, we have booked a cab for tomorrow. For what? Sight seeing. I know there is not too much to see in Hyderabad, but still some places like Golkonda Fort, Charminar, Ramoji Film City etc should not be missed out. We had enough of spicy food here, so nothing more to tell about food. If you still want to know what are the fooding habits of people at Hyderabad, check the equation on my last post.

Hyderabad / Internship / Personal / Technical — 4 Comments
21
Jun 08

Internship Updates

Its long since I last posted the update. It Saturday ( Holiday ), still am sitting in office till 8 in the night. Shocked? I have nothing to do at flat, so Microsoft becomes our destination even on weekend. This is the day on which we dont write a single line of code, nor do we try our hands on debugging (has always been a futile attempt). The guy next cubicle watched movies the day long. This is the day in which we watch YouTube videos,download junks,eat, even sleep in our cubicles and blah blah blah.

My loyal blog readers (if any) would be asking what’s going on or “SUP?”. The only answer you can expect “Just Going!” I havnt prepared a single line for placement, neither for the work here. If we have any problems, Google comes to rescue, the find the documentation in MSDN. Many Many classes in .NET are not documented, hope I may add community notes once I become a bit fluent in using the API. My work has being going on at a smooth pace, God only knows if something disastrous can happen. I am to get a full complied list of bugs for a tool which my team is working on. Now what that for? Actually the tool I have to build is a sort of helper tool, so some sort of integration has to be there. I cant disclose more due to the fact I have signed NDA.

Made a post at Google Groups for Web Search,as I was getting a 403 Forbidden error. Google thought I was searching like a bot. No reply till now.

Made a new post at my Tech Blog Check it

Updates the Pages of my Blog, added Networks and Movies & Popcorns page

Internship / News — No Comments
6
Jun 08

Home or Office?

Ask this question to a full time employee of any company? Where does he want spend most of his time, the answer can be at home due to obvious fact- they have gone tired of work. Well! The situation is different here, we interns like the office very much. Want to know the reasons? AC, Cokes, Beverages, Free Supper, Free Lunch (using Food allowance), hope drop by cab at night, no reporting time etc etc etc. What more we want?

Now lets discuss on work, I learnt C#.NET using Visual Studio.NET with .NET Framework 4.0. These two products as far as I know are still not released but Microsoft has issued a press release for the same. I developed a widget type of application for getting myself familiar with this new language, which surely cant be used for daily work. Now I have been given the main project about which I cant disclose because I signed the NDA at the time of joining. The work is going to be tedious but the environmnt at office is very relaxing (at least for now).

There is a strike by the cabs and auto rickshaws here in Hyderabad due to which were not able to report at work. Cabs are off the roads due to some VAT issues and autos due to increased fuel prices. Worst is still to come, all the drivers are expected to move to strike from Sunday. That too this strike is indefinite!!! :(

Internship / Trips — No Comments
31
May 08

Fun @ Hyderabad

So finally have reached Hyderabad on Thursday itself, joining is on 2nd of June- Monday. Microsoft has arranged a guest house for our stay for the next 15 days. Am speechless at the facilities provided here- AC, Plasma TV, wi-fi, Fridge etc.

Our office is too far off from this place. Firstly we have to walk 2 kms from guest house to get to the nearest bus stand, from where Gachibowli is more than 10 kms. Bus service is too cheap at this place. Yesterday we went to central mall, where we watched Chronicals of Narnia- Prince Caspain at PVR. Did a lot of shopping and returned back late at night.

At present am relaxing at the guest house, (mis)using the wi-fi connection at the most. Only sleeping eating and TV is out routine. Who knows what is in store of us from Monday?

Check out some pics Here

Personal / Technical — No Comments
27
May 08

Leaving for Hyderabad

Dont have much to say, after all its a scribble board! Me leaving for Hyderabad today 27th May for the Internship which starts next week, 2nd of June. I will be reaching there on 29th morning at Secundrabad which is quite near to my destination.

My journey has a break at Bangalore, means I will be boarding bus to Bangalore which reaches at morning tomorrow and then again train from B’lore to Hyderabad. Train (Rajdhani Exp. ) departs B’lore at 8PM and reaches its stop at 7 morning next day. The people to Microsoft will arrange for 15 days of accommodation at their guest house after which we have to arrange for ourselves.

I have fixed my laptop completely from all the problems except that the partition’s (sda9) file system (jfs) on which I installed “Hardy Stable” is giving a lot of problems. I hint some problems with the file system itself. The XSever hangs and I have no other option other than a hard-reboot. Next time, the Xserver fails to start and drops me to shell. Problem doesnt end here, whatever I try to do is blocked since / is mounted read-only.

P.S: Exams finished yesterday, nothing left to comment as it was completely messed up. Lab grades out, am satisfied except below expectation in one of the three.

College / Placement / Technical / Thoughts — No Comments
28
Apr 08

When Luck Shines

I had heard somewhere that when you are in misery and luck shines “It Rains, and you then desperately need a shelter”. This is what I feel now! In last five sems of my engineering, I did nothing except timepass, orkut, chatting and parties. It was sixth sem when I thought that something really needs to be done to make this degree a meaningful one.

I didnt have anything to write in my resume as any proficiency which I ought to right needs a certi to prove it (which I dont have). I havnt even done any networking course or anything of the sort which others have done. Then in the start of semester I came to know of a golden opportunity, applied for it and I achieved it. I am still short of words to explain the whole experiences.

Even after coming back from Bangalore, I didnt even get a single second to gasp! Assignments, Lab exams, projects etc etc have made my life a hell. I have manged to get outputs in last two lab exams ( ITT- Last Fri and CG-Today) and have to face Compiler lab exam tomorrow. Frankly speaking I dont know anything in viva as I skipped this paper to achieve the *achievement of the semester*.

TCS is coming this Friday,2nd of May. Interviews are scheduled for two days as far as my knowledge is concerned. Everything will be over by 4th May though we are still supposed to show our ITT lab mini project this Friday. Third sessionals are scheduled from 8th May and Semester exams from 16th (which is going to get preponed). I still have to start with S of SE (Software Engineering) and even in Compilers. Too bad situation over this side, never ever faced such in all six semesters of my engineering.

Next update is surely scheduled on Saturday, maybe one even before.

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