Skiing !!

I have been waiting so long to write this post but was waiting for the snaps ... now that I have the snaps, here it is ... Last weekend, we all decided to convert the seattle snow storm to our advantage ... What better time for skiing, right ?It might sound very ironic but even after being in snowy weather for 2 years during my masters, I had never done skiing before ... so I was damn excited !

Beautiful views on the way

Saturday morning a group of 8 of us left early morning around 8 and reached there by around 9 ... Most of us were doing it for the first time so everyone was as excited as I was ... as we started approaching the summit at snoqualmie mountains, all I could say was, 'Yeh Hasi wadiyan, Yeh Khula Aasaman" .. It was just amazing, truly amazing work of nature everywhere ... Look the at the pics here ..

Ready to skii !!

Soon the long drive was over ... first I felt sad that the drive was over but then I got out and just had one look at the people skiing and all the sadness just vanished in like a second ... Looked like the whole seattle was there ... we found out that everyday ski rental was $34 + lift ticket was ~$50 bucks ... and then there was this pass for beginners called EZ123 which was for $99 - it included 3 days of rental (worth $112) + 3 lessons + 3 days of lift (worth $150) ... so thought thats the best deal ... and we were of course hoping that we will like it so much that we would want to return next time ...

We got our rental stuff ... and my god, the rental shoes !! They were sooo huge and so awkward to wear ! Walking with them on was damn tough ... I had never imagined them so big ! But oh well, it was not if I had a choice, right ? :) .. The beginner day 1 lessons started soon and I found out how tough skiing is ... well not really, to be frank, skiing was easy ! It was very easy to come down skiing down the slope, it would take hardly few seconds for that but walking up the hill would take more than 10 minutes ... not to mention, it was so damn tough !! It was more exercise than 1 hour work out in pro club ! Even in that cold weather, I was sweating like anything !

(Group snap1)

He started teaching with a normal walk with ski and then went ahead with right and left turns, weight balancing, how to stop (without falling ;) ) and so on .. things became tougher and tougher gradually ... but it was mostly about practice & confidence. After a few hours of practice, I could take left turns pretty well ... or at least i thought so :) ... It was great fun !! Falling down in all white snow and getting up and falling again ! :) ... After a while we lost our count ...

(Group snap 2)

After a good workout for 3 - 4 hours, we took a break, had our lunch & rested for a while ... Thats when we took off our shoes and felt like heavens !! thats why putting them on after the lunch was even tougher !

(The lift in the back)

After lunch we practised a little more and then decided to move on the medium level slope - This was at a much higher elevation and was serviced by a lift. Getting on and off from the lift was an adventure in itself ... it was more like a moving bench (imagine a bench in a park) which you have to catch as fast as a local train on Dombivli station :) ... You need a technique to get on it and to get off it ... but we found it the hard way ...:)

Looking down from that elevation, we all predecided our path down - it was a 'Z' shaped path so as to make sure that we dont go down fast on the slope and have a control on our decent ... but let me tell you, no matter how much even you decide, its gonna be a complete fiasco ... I dont remember how many times I fell down while coming down ... and most of the times my planning didnt work ... since to go down Zigzag, you need to turn both right and left :) and I could only turn left properly but I could not control my right turns ... So I always ended up going straight down the slope and falling down ... but it was awesome !! Its difficult to tell it in words, you have to imagine it for yourself !!

(Snoqualmie mountains in the night)

It was about 5.30pm and we were tired ! we decided to call it a day then and left for home at around 6 .. In any adventure, the journey back is the most boring one as everyone is sleepy and tired and all ... I came back home and just threw myself on the bed and handed myself over to sleep .. :) I was a prisoner for more than 10 - 12 hours that night !! Thank god the next day was a sunday ... one full day to recover ...

Next day, whole body was aching and I came to know about various parts of back and neck and shoulders and legs which I never knew existed thru' it ... :) .. still even after all this, I am waiting for the next chance to enjoy skiing again ...

Get-together ... a complete success !!!

As I mentioned in my previous post, we had been planning on organising a get-together (potluck sort of) for MS (Microsoft) Indians from Bombay (Mumbai :) ) since a week now ... It was today @ 6 pm .. I just came back from there ... It was a huge huge success !! I had so much fun !!!



The menu included 'Misal Pav', 'Vada Pav', 'Kande Pohe', Dhokala' & 'Kadak Cutting Chai' ... Yes ! You missed it :P .. It was sooo awesome ! I could not believe the enthusiasm everyone showed ... 70 ppl had RSVPed .. Out of them, 42 showed up for the event ... And what a potluck !! ... man ! 5 different types of misal, 3 different types of Wadas .. 4 different Kande Pohe & 2 different dhokalas ... more than enough food for 42 ppl !! It was a feast really !! :) ...


The MS cafe where we had arranged this get-together, had a speaker system .. so we played Hindi/ Marathi/ Pop music in the background while we enjoyed the food ! And then after the dinner, we all sang songs !! well ... not only songs and parodies of songs but also old advertizements (remember BTex, Humara Bajaj ads & Mile Sur Mera Tumhaara ?? ) Yes !! The best thing was though we were all meeting each other for the first time, we gelled with each other sooo well !! There was no awkwardness .. no hesitations .. It was just fantastic ... The group had bachelors, families, families with kids ... everyone really ! And still it was never a boring party at any point !!

(Yep ! Thats me in Kurta ! :) )

(Song Session - post dinner)

Can you believe this whole thing started with a single email from a girl craving for Misal pav !! Within a short preparation time span of merely a week, this event turned out to be sooo good !! Unbelievable !! I am soo happy for being able to organize such an event ... Made lott of new friends, acquaintances .. Hopefully this will continue & we will keep meeting each other regularly ... we planned to arrange something of this sort for Ganesh festival as well .. so lets see how that goes .. I am already looking forward to that one ..

Microsoft On-site Interview 03/15/06

My first MS on-site interview .. it was a great experience! Hopefully this post will help all of you prepare for MS or for that matter any other interview.

Preparation : First a little bit about how I prepared for the interview. This is no way close to complete ...

There's always Google ! I found so many microsoft questions online ! So many good websites talking day and night about technical, logical and HR questions and their expected answers. Here are a few websites that I found useful :

http://www.sellsbrothers.com/fun/msiview
http://www.techinterviews.com/?p=115
http://geekswithblogs.net/jolson/archive/2005/01/21/20636.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog/archive/2004/03/24/95265.aspx
http://www.glaak.com/interviews/ ---> Very Very Useful
http://discuss.fogcreek.com/joelonsoftware/default.asp?cmd=show&ixPost=17697
http://www.techinterview.org/ ---> Very Very Useful for logical questions

If you search online, you will find many such sites and believe me, just to read all that stuff online, you need at least 2 to 3 days !! There are a few videos available online as well which describe the MS interview process. They are here :

What is it like to interview at Microsoft : http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=18608
Shuttle Experience : http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=18718
Whiteboard Question Example : http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=19171

Go get yourself a copy of the book "Programming Interviews Exposed" ! One of the very rare books which explains the logic and thinking involved behind the correct solution. Starting from obvious (and maybe wrong) solutions to correct and hard solutions - it gives all ... there are a few mistakes in the book but use the book to develop your logic & thinking process !

Interview :

All the above sites had specifically mentioned that you dont have to wear a coat / tie for the interview if you are not comfortable wearing it. So I decided to be in simple formals without tie / coat. The interview was scheduled to start at 9.00 I reached a little early at around 8.30 at building 30. I was to be interviewed by Live Communications Server group for a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) position.

1. My first interview was HR with the recruiting coordinator. She first of all told me about the heirarchy of peple in the group and also gave me names of first three interviewers. She then gave me a few tips such as always ask questions, just be yourself, understand and reiterate the question, state your assumptions clearly etc. Then she asked me a few non-technical questions such as "why Microsoft ?" , "where do you see yourself in 5 - 10 years" and other normal questions. This started at about 9.15 and ended by around 10 or so.

2. My first technical interview was with the SDET Lead (directly under whom I would work if selected). He took me to his room and asked me a few startup questions like which language are you most familiar with ( C/ C++ / JAVA ), tell me a little bit about your previous job and responsibilities .. then he gave me my first whiteboard question "Write a non-recursive function to reverse a singly linked list in place" .. I had done this so many times before but doing it on whiteboard is still different !! I asked him a number of questions such as what should it return ? what if null linked list is passed etc ... then explained to him the algorithm ... wrote the code after that ... he seemed happy. Then he asked me to delete a node from a singly linked list when only the pointer to that node is given. A few more questions on the similar lines and then I was given a chance to ask any questions if any. Its always best to ask questions so I asked him about the job resposibilities and work environment etc ..

3. My next technical interview was with SDE lead (this was a special request by the SDET lead, normally SDET interviewees are not interviewed by SDE leads but oh well !!). He started with some general questions regarding binary trees and their properties. Later he gave me an inverted binary tree (two children pointing to their parent node). Numbered the children in a specific order and asked me to find a relation between the numbered nodes. Then he asked me to write a function on whiteboard to place all the nodes of this binary tree in an array (of nodes) given the depth d. (as depth d is known, the number of nodes will be 2^d - 1 so array can be used). I wrote that and then I had to come up with cases to test it e.g. what if d is negative .. what if d is more than 32 .. 2 ^32 wont be integer anymore ! etc ) HE seemed to be happy with those cases ... then he changed the problem from inverted 'binary' tree to inverted 'n'ary tree and asked me what changes will the code have & so on.. After this excercise, he asked me to write a function to find the intersection of two linked lists. I was very close and had almost solved it ... but then I needed a hint from him to get to the final solution ... he seemed ok with that ...

4. It was about 12 O'clock and it was time for lunch interview with another SDET Lead. He took me out to a chinese buffet ... While driving asked me a number of technical and non-technical questions such as swap 2 integers without using temporary buffer, what problems are there with this solution, previous job etc ... During lunch, he asked me to write a function to find the second maximum in a given array on the tissue paper ! I wrote that and tested it with different examples ... wrote test cases ... then he asked me to write a function to find if the given string is a substring of other string - return true/ false. Again writing test cases and testing it with few examples was necessary. This interview was probably the longest as it was about 1.30 pm when we came back to MS campus.

He told me that my next interview is at 3 O clock and someone will meet me at the lobby. This is normally a good sign. Unlike other places, MS interviewers communicate with each other during the interview process and if the first 3 interviews are not good, candidate is sent back home right then. So when I was told that I have more interviews, that gave me a huge confidence boost.

5. At 3 O'clock, Test Manager (higher up the heirarchy from SDET lead) took my interview. He kind of shocked me with his first question. What is the difference between packet switching and circuit switching ? I answered that and I think I did good as he gave me a hypothetical scenario ... consider an airplane. I am not concerned about its communication with outside world. For what kind of communications inside the plane, will you use packet switching and for which situations, will you use circuit switching ? .... there was no correct answer ... all I had to do was justify whatever I say being consistent with the previous answer. Then he asked me a number of questions about software development life cycle and gave me a number of 'if ... then ?" sort of questions ... finally he gave me a whiteboard question ... 'a new database backup system over a network' .. test it .. I must say this was a very abstract interview as there was no code to be written .. no right/ wrong answers .. but I enjoyed it !

6. The final interview was with the Program Manager who had been working in MS for last 12 years ! He initially asked a number of questions based on previous job and why MS etc .. then gave me another whiteboard question "given a fixed length stream (wrap around possible) of characters, implement a puchar and getchar function" ... queue data structure, head and tail maintenance was what he was looking for .. I did that and he asked me for an alternate solution which I could provide after thinking for about couple of minutes ... then he asked me if there was any project / any particular thing I was proud of and such HR type questions ...

Finally at about 5 - 5.15 pm, the interviews were over and I was told that MS will contact me tomorrow (normally they take a week or so but I explained to them my special situation so ...). Once you give an interview, you also kinda feel how the interview was ... you kinda know what the outcome would be ... I felt pretty positive at the end of the day !! It was a long long day and I was tired !!! Next day MS offered me the SDET position which I was more than happy to acept :) !

Everything happens for the best ?

When was the last time you felt weak ? when was the last time you realized that you can never have full control over your life ? .. of course we all know it but if things work out the way you wanted them to - for a long period of time - then you start feeling, hey I decide the rules ! I have control over my life !! You start planning your future and then suddenly it hits you !! when you are completely unaware & unprepared ... its like someone out there wants to remind you, you are in the Matrix !! and you play by someone else's predecided rules !! You try to look back and redo all your calculations thinking that there must have been a mistake somewhere ... you must have done something wrong somewhere .. you try to debug the problem but after a long research you realize that ... there is no bug !! (there is no spoon !! remember ?) .. this is the expected behaviour !! what am I trying to debug ?

Why am I saying all this ? coz that realization happened to me just a few weeks back !! and I am glad it happened (of course ! now that its over ! duhh !!) Heres how ..

This new year 2006 had been going pretty well for me ... The job life had been good .. I was getting more and more responsibilities, the start-up I was working for, had been doing well or at least it looked like so .. I was getting more projects and was busier than before ! I had just been to India in Deewali 2005 and spent about a month ! Austin had been treating me well & I liked austin ! So all in all .. I was pretty happy, no issues whatsoever ...

I moved to a new apartment - bigger (and of course much higher rent !), better and close to my workplace on March 1st & signed a 12 month lease ... I threw away my old sofa & bed (they were in a very bad shape anyway !) and was ready to spend some money on buying a new sofa, bed and other furniture .. that day, I came back home a little early from office for unpacking and getting the new house in shape ... around 7 pm, my colleague called up and he is like 'Dude, you might want to come back to office" and I am like "why?" .."The company is closed down !!" ...I must say the first time it was damn funny but after a while when I found out that he was serious .. it hit me ! hit me hard !!!

What does this mean now ? what the hell went wrong there ? I am out of job ? i am out of job ? whats gonna happen next ? am I even allowed to stay here in US ?.. how many days ? what abt my visa ? what abt the money, the paychecks ? again, why the hell did the company close down ? why is this so sudden ? no notice no intimation no nothing ?what am I gonna say to my parents ? questions, questions and questions !! it filled my mind ... 'I am ok .. I can do this .. I can survive !!' I told myself but then looking back, the seven stages of grief were inevitable ... acceptance, anger, denial, depression, fear, guilt and shock. Exactly in that order !! It took me some time before I could get back in my senses and started thinking straight.

There it was .. the worst day of my life or so it seemed ! I was in US .. all alone .. with no job & a grace period of 10 days to find a new job before my H1 visa becomes invalid ! great !! 10 days .. is that some kind of a joke ? I didnt know what to do ... what I needed was a plan !! right !! a plan !!
Next day it became all clear ... we all spoke to a lawyer and here is what I had to do : I had to get a job or at least apply for an H1 visa transfer within next 15 - 20 days !

Next few days were so bad !! no time to sleep, no time to eat ... all the time just applying to any and every job online on dice, monster, yahoo hotjobs and company websites, forwarding resumes to my friends, calling up as many people as I could ... I mean it was just crazy ... But I must say things were not looking that bad ! I had a couple of phone interviews with Qpass, a couple with Amazon, one with Microsoft, Silicon Labs , freescale, Marvell and a few others within a span of hardly 7 - 10 days .. ! A few of them thru' contacts and (believe it or not !)a few by applying on company websites !!

so in all, things were moving .. but then so was time !! Microsoft on-site interview was scheduled for Wednesday March 15. That day was another great experience (check this out !) .. after a whole day's tiring interview, next day Microsoft called me up and gave me an offer !! My dream company was offering me a job !! How could I say no ?

So here I am ! A to be Microsoft-employee !! Truly believing that "Everything happens for the best !!" ... I could not have imagined a better end to this whole thing !! Looking back, I realized that I was at a curve 15 days back ... I could not see whats beyond and things looked pretty shaky at that time ...So does that mean I can see everything clearly now ? of course not !! .. so what has changed ? well, now I know that there will be more curves to come and I will be prepared for each of them ... I might skid on a few, I might hit a few obstacles on the way but journey wont stop ... its only just begun !! and I am going to enjoy every moment of it !!!