Last three days were pretty exhausting, yet exciting and amazing! :-). I was in Munich (Microsoft Germany), were my final internship interview took place. Our interviewers came directly from Redmond. There were cca. 32 students from Central / Eastern Europe invited for these interviews. Results should be available at the beginning of April.
<road>
I, together with another intern candidate (cool guy!) left Bratislava this Sunday, around 14:00pm. We were traveling through Wien to Munich by train. 1st class, excellent care, power outlets, enough room for laptops, great! We wrote some C/C++ code, exchange some experiences in C# and played NHL 2002 (I lost 0:3, grr! :-)). We arrived in Munich around 8:30pm, took taxi that took us to our hotel (cca. 40 minutes ride through Munich, huh!).
</road>
<night before>
We checked in the hotel (Alarun), almost get stuck in elevator (you get in with one door, but another door opens when you want to get out. So you have to turn round to see which doors will actually open ;-)). Rooms were fantastic, TV, bathroom, candies. Our rooms were next to each other, so we unpacked our laptops and tried WiFi. Signal was excellent. Super!
Objectives were set: 1. Find Microsoft campus
2. Find something to eat
Pretty girl ;-) on reception told us where MS campus is located (only 10 minutes walk from hotel). So we get there and WOW! We saw very beautiful and modern building(s). I have to take some pics immediately. OK, first objective completed. Now, find something to eat - this seems harder than the first, because we didn't see any opened restaurants nearby (it was almost 11pm). Fortunately, there was one pizzeria opened with cool staff (real Italians), so we can eat there.
After good dinner, we came back to hotel and started our preparation for tomorrow's interview. It was recommended to take a good night sleep before interview, but I personally think, that this isn't effectively possible :-). We were pretty nervous, we coded crazy things with linked lists, binary trees, arrays, strings, reviewed our recent projects, did some short mock interviews and so... A lot of fun there! :-)
I went to bed around 2:30am, but had a strange feeling in stomach, so no "good sleep" at all :-)
</night before>
<interview>
D-day is here! My friend’s interview was scheduled at 11am, mine at 1:45pm. Mine was right in a row with his, so we hadn’t chance to talk after he finished. The whole interview consisted of 3 separate interviews (coding, testing, general). 3 people (Ben, John, Cait) were interviewing 3 candidates simultaneously. I was doing mine with 2 other candidates from Czech republic. After each interview I had to wait in lobby for next interviewer. WOW, what an interview!!! Coding was fun. However, I was not far from doing a mistake. I was so focused to produce most effective and bug free code that I almost forgot to write code that solves task assigned to me :-) (I scratched the solution few minutes after beginning on a sheet of paper and then I focused only on thinking about crazy test-cases and boundary conditions). Fortunately, interviewer was great and did some "cipher cracking" in my papers to find the right solution. Next stop was testing. I’ve really enjoyed this one. Thinking of more and more crazy test cases, be able to structure and categorize them and don’t forget what I've already tested and said before, cool! Believe me or not, I discovered right on the interview that "testing" can also be fun. I plan to look closely on this topic in near future. After this, I came to technical recruiter where I answered general questions about my study, favorite MS product / technology and answered one more testing question. I've enjoyed this interview too.
I have a good feeling in general. Because I have done the best what I can, I'm satisfied with my internship interview. Of course, nothing is perfect and I realize some weak points. However, as I know about them now, I can work to sweep them out. Isn't this great? You simply can't loose... :-) (I love this beatiful theoretical thesis. However, you can loose the internship, *sigh*).
I thank my interviewers for professional approach and excellent interview they prepared. It was an amazing experience!
</interview>
<night after>
Czech colleagues had to leave right after interviews because they had hotel only for one night. Also other group of candidates was leaving, so no big "after party" could take place... :-(. At least, we did a small party with my friend, we visited Munich and did some town sightseeing. Then we visited our Italian friends, ordered excellent pizza and Pilsner Bier. Finally, I had a good night sleep that night. :-)
</night after>
Road home was OK. We watched Antitrust movie and talked about "big questions" regarding to IT (open-source, JAVA vs .NET, etc.) little bit :-)
I arrived tired, and I’m tired even now, but I’m happy and I know this was one of the never-forgettable experiences.
I’m looking forward to see results... :-p
<edit>22.3 Fixed some typos and formulations. Wrote few more words about "nothing to loose" thesis :-) </edit>
Some photos:
ICE Train to Munich
What to do during 6 hours ride...
Train station in Munich
I love subway. In Munich, there is classic subway (called U-Bahn) and also another type, S-Bahn, that rides on the ground.
MS campus at night
MS campus at night
My room
MS building - just after interview :-)
Another look at MS building
The "stone of destiny" :-)