I was inspired enough by Gopal's story to document my own. This is not about me getting a job at Microsoft. This is about me before I got a job at Microsoft.

Around May 2005 or so was a nasty time to be me or any of my batchmates. We had just entered the final year of engineering college and everyone was obsessed with getting a job. A 'job' meant being one of the thousands hired each year by one of the services companies. At that time, Microsoft was far, far away for me - I just wanted to get hired by somebody, anybody, as badly as anyone else.

I had a problem. Though my marks were decent, they were not stellar. I was also haunted by a failed Maths exam two years before.¹ Like vultures swooping in for the kill, one by one, the large Indian IT service companies came to my college for 'placement'.

These events were funny, if you were fortunate enough not to have to take part in them. Around a week before the 'big day', you'll get to know who's eligible and who isn't. If you don't have any outstanding arrears, you're good to go. Of course, you don't have to know anything about computers - these companies are so desperate that they would hire any body off the street.

I skipped the first two companies for I had heard bad reviews of them from people who were working there. I decided to attend the third, more out of fear of missing the boat rather than anything else.

The day before the 'big day', we had a 'pre-placement' talk at another college. This is where employees and HR from the company would talk about what you need to have to get hired - and what they would pay you if you did get hired. I walked into the main hall where this pre-placement talk was being held and did a double-take.

The hall was overflowing with almost twice its maximum capacity - there were close to a 1000 people all packed in, all eagerly waiting to hear what they would make if they got a job. People speak of 'aha' moments. I had what I believe is the opposite - a 'Oh my God' moment. I was disappointed, saddened to be part of such a ... herd of people. I felt as if I was part of a huge meat market - albeit one where all the meat had engineering degrees attached.

After a couple of hours of incredibly boring videos ², we learnt that the 'big day' would be the next day, and that we would need to carry a host of documents - marksheets all the way back to 10th standard!

The Written Test

Since there were so many of us who were eligible, we were put through a written exam. This was a huge farce - most of the people in the room copied in one form or another and the questions were brain-dead. Surprisingly, there was not even a single computer related question. After a couple of hours of waiting, I learnt that I was one of the few hundred who qualified.

I felt relieved more than anything else - I just wanted to get this done with and go home.

The Big Day

I was optimistic about doing well. I'm not sure where this confidence came from - was it from belief in my coding skills or in the lack of thereof in the people around me? I'm really not sure.

I walked into the classroom where the interview was to be held. Each interview was a 30 minute affair with one employee ³.Having spent the previous night on interview websites which uniformly preached the virtues of cheerfulness, I said a cheerful 'Hi' a cheerleader would have been proud of and walked in.

My interviewer (let's call him 'Grumpy' - for obvious reasons) grunted a welcome and motioned me to take a seat. With another grunt (obviously, vocabulary wasn't his forte), he asked for my marksheets.

Things got off to a bad start almost instantly.

He pointed to my Maths failure in second year and asked me about it. I stammered out a reply of how I was badly unprepared and cracked a joke of how much I hate Maths. Which he didn't laugh at. Crap.

After a few more uncomfortable minutes, he asked me my first question. He drew a molecular structure and asked me to identify it.

Oh oh. You see, I was not that hot at chemical compounds either. I peered closely - but I had no chance. I sheepishly told him I had no clue.

He grunted again. I wasn't sure whether it meant "Don't worry" or it meant "You're so dead". Anyway, it was time for question 2.

Question 2 was as bad as the one preceding it. I was asked to prove a Maths theorem. Well, there's a higher probability of me going out on a date with Jessica Alba than there is of me cracking Maths theorems.

The next 20 minutes were equally bad. Believe it or not, I did't answer a *single* question - almost all of them were mathematical or about some arcane aspect of physics or chemistry.I had lost all hopes of getting hired and was just waiting for the ordeal to end. If this were a boxing match, the referee would have called off the bout long back.

To wrap things up,I think he decided to throw in a computer science question, surely positive that I wouldn't answer it. Well, he thought wrong. By this time, my ego had been so badly damaged that I was just waiting for an opportunity to show off. The question was 'What is a garbage collector?'. The answer he got in return was a ten minute lecture from me on everything from copying collectors all the way to the CLR's generational mechanisms. I was just happy to be given a chance to speak on something I knew about - Maths I may not know, but GCs, I do know!

After my monologue, he stared at me for a second. After a couple more seconds of this uncomfortable silence,  he grunted that I could leave the room.

A few hours later, I found out that I had been hired. I also found out how some of the other interviews had gone. People were asked to show their marksheets alone and was hired based on their getting full marks in some subject back in 12th grade. Others were asked to sing and dance (literally!).

Me, I was just relieved that the ordeal was over. I was also relieved that I didn't have to go through one of these experiences again, that I was now officially part of the IT boom.

I hated the entire experience. I hated the fact that computer skills were the last thing they looked for in a coding job. I hated the fact that I was treated with so little respect. I hated the fact that my work with computers was ignored, that the only thing that mattered was me having failed Maths. I was also dreading having to write code in a company that hires people based on their knowledge of physics.

Post Script

Well, as you know, I eventually wound up getting interviewed by Microsoft and joined the B0rg straight out of college in May 2005. Interestingly enough, I got a letter from the company I had been hired for sometime in December 2005 asking me to report for work - whole 6 months after I had finished college. A lot of my classmates were forced to twiddle their thumbs at home for even longer, just because these companies couldn't find enough spots to stuff them in.

For the record, Microsoft never asked me for my marks or my marksheet. To this date, I don't think whether my manager's manager knows whether I've finished college or not. 

Notes

1. People who know me know how much I detest Maths. And almost all subjects which don't involve computers or literature.

2. When I joined Microsoft, I worked with our HR to generate high quality videos to show colleges. Even though I'm not completely happy with the outcome, if you attend a Microsoft campus pre-placement talk, you'll hopefully hear me and others talk about *why* we like working for Microsoft. Stuff like hacking on stuff you like, working on stuff that will change millions of people's lives. None of that BS about 'synergy across verticals' that I heard at some IT services companies' PP talks.

3.Who invariably looked bored and dis-interested - I imagined that the bad employees were punished by being sent to colleges like ours)

# Saturday, August 26, 2006 9:27 PM