10 Notes™

10 Notes vs. Microsoft

Today I interviewed for a Senior Consultant position with Microsoft’s MCS division. I’m now second-guessing my decision to “live the American dream” and continue building 10 Notes.

Let’s face it: for an individual with only semi-hardcore development experience, no CS degree, and zero experience with “Big [digit] Consulting”, it isn’t every day that Microsoft wants to talk to you. In the last month, I’ve ignored recruiters from Lockheed, Grumman and Time Warner. But this was Microsoft…I’ve been as giddy as a school girl since the first phone screening.

Since I have no car, I had to plan for a loooong public-transportation commute from Columbia Heights, DC to Reston, VA. I got up at 4am, put on the monkey suit, and embarked @6. At 9am, after 19 cups of shitty Panera coffee, I was finally talking to Interviewer 1 of 3…

1. The “cool guy” representative. Our conversation was good (I think). As with the 2 phone screenings, I had to answer a fair number of technical questions with “I don’t know”. Did okay on the project-manager and open source sorts of questions. We also yukked it up a little bit regarding MS’ certification program, “how they do business”, and were generally friendly. When he asked “do you have any other questions?”, I kinda lost my composure a little bit. I’ve been reading this individual’s blog for a while…and I had to know if he was that guy. Totally lame.
2. The “technical guru” representative. I was pretty interested to meet this guy, since we’re both alumni of Information Concepts (which I knew beforehand). The owners of IC are on my reference list, and I was genuinely looking forward to this conversation. I felt encouraged when Interviewer #2 walked in wearing his dress-down-Friday Hawaiian shirt. While he was asking me details about my current project list, technical infrastructure, etc., I felt compelled to go to the whiteboard and illustrate what I was working on; all of the markers were out of juice and I dropped one of them twice. Long story short: this guy was a stone-faced, very knowledgeable, technical guru…I suspect he is very good at his job, and I know exactly why. I felt like a teeny tiny baby talking with him. When we shook hands, he bade me “Good luck”; I don’t think screeners say that unless they’ve already made a negative decision in their minds.
3. The “federal” representative. Didn’t even catch this guy’s last name. My original interview schedule indicated that I would be talking with Interviewer #1 again for this segment. Since #3 was obviously seeing my resume for the first time, I took this as a sign that #1 had probably passed on any further discussion with me. More of the same technical questions, then the session devolved in to a poetic journey of how much he loved Microsoft, opportunities available, incentives, etc.

At this point, Microsoft fed me lunch. The 3 other candidates that were on site were also in the room, and they also had no clue about “what we were supposed to do next”. Eventually, a secretary came around and told us that the recruiting coordinator was “still conducting an interview”, and that we could all depart.

So: I seriously doubt I’m still in the running for this position. I haven’t been to MS’ Reston facility in several years though, so the interview experience alone was a little bit like going to Disneyland, regardless of the outcome. I’ve been told that I won’t hear anything +/- for at least 10 days, so I’m trying to put the whole thing out of my mind for the time being.