The Interview - Part Two
I arrived at Building 19 (the recruiting building) around 9:22. I checked in at the desk, registered my car, and received my visitor badge for the day. I then looked around a bit and sat down on one of the couches across from a recent graduate of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, CA. This gentleman was also casually dressed as I was, but the others that were waiting were wearing shirt and tie or even possibly a suit.
I believe my recruiter (Cristal) came out first. I followed her back into an office and we chatted a bit. The most memorable portion of our chat is when she asked what I was most proud of in my career so far. I thought about this for a moment, and knew I may only have this opportunity once, so I wanted to be as open and honest as possible. I answered this question in the following way:
"Please don't take this answer in the wrong way. In no way do I mean to sound arrogant, conceited, or cocky, but at this point in time I must say that I am most proud of my current track record. What I mean by this is that I have always been offered a job at any company I interviewed at in person. I know that this may change some day and today may be the day, but this is what I am currently most proud of."
Shortly after our discussion I was taken over to Building 42 to talk with Jon Jung of the WebDev team. I think that opening the day with Jon was a great thing. Jon and I chatted about a few things, then we got down to business and he asked me one problem solving question and one coding question. I felt like I stumbled a bit on the problem solving question, but eventually figured it out, though I was still confident that I was doing a good job.
At one point during the interview with Jon, he mentioned that he looks for people that are very passionate about technology. I asked Jon at this time what his perception of me would have been, had I worn a Linux t-shirt rather then my C# shirt (I was honestly thinking about doing this. I even emailed Scoble asking what his thoughts were on wearing such a shirt). Jon responded that he would have noticed the shirt, but probably would not have thought much about it.
After interviewing with Jon, it was time for my lunch interview with Peixin Han. This was a great interview, because I got to eat food during it. During lunch Peixin asked how I would test a clock. My first question was what kind of clock is this, analog or digital? I asked a few more questions then I began digging into the test questions. We talked about how to test a clock for about 40 minutes. I think I covered a lot of good tests and scenarios, but probably could have come up with a few more.
Then once we got back to her office she asked me another problem solving question and a coding question. These were both fun questions. I came up with an immediate answer for the problem solving question, then she made it a bit harder and I had to think about it for a bit. I did end up solving both in the end.