I failed the Microsoft interview after asking for a different brain teaser
That time when I failed the Microsoft interview
In 2015, a CS student aced the behavioral questions and even got a brain teaser straight from 'Cracking the Coding Interview'. Rather than pretend he didn't know it, he admitted it and asked for another—a riddle he couldn't solve under pressure. A month later, the rejection email arrived. Was it the honesty or the failed riddle that did him in?
I told the interviewer I already knew the riddle, and I asked for another one.
- shubhamjain
As I have grown older, I have realized dead-honesty is a false ideal to live by, especially when it comes to being rewarded in the capitalistic world. I know someone who reached executive level position in a major company and all of his career progress can be traced back to lying on his resume about a NASA internship he never got, which he conveniently purged later from everywhere.
I wouldn’t go that far, but I think it’s perfectly fine to reverse-engineer the interview game and reap the rewards. There’s no reason to feel guilty about it.
- buildbot
Counterpoint to many responses here - when I have interviewed people, it’s a really positive signal if the candidate says they have already seen a problem- the we can move onto something more interesting! Not solving does not mean failure either. As a candidate myself I always mention if I have seen similar problems, such as finding primes - real example, and I was hired on that loop at Microsoft!
On the other hand, if I heard that a candidate had not mentioned they had the same question twice, or later let it be known they already knew the answer, I would lose a lot of trust in them.
Be honest; it’s more likely you will be hired by honest people.
- ThrowawayB7
Odd that they received a brain teaser at a MS interview in 2015. IIRC that's several years after internal interviewer training was updated to recommend that brain teasers not be used in interviews because they weren't useful.
- skittleson
I really loved to work there. I knew alot of friends, toured the campus, and even worked with prior employees that had good experiences. Every product before 2015 was beautiful (i still miss my Zune).
Then they broke me. I tried to give feedback on the products, interviewed, and really tried to reach out to them. Mostly ignored (except Outlook team, thanks ). The heavy marketing and tech debt within Windows is what did it for me. Rant over.... the interview felt like some trick questions at that time.
- userbinator
I have not seen this problem before, but the answer seems blindingly obvious? A balance is trinary, not binary. You just need to explain the decision tree.