On Friday, February 4th, shortly after I got out of an interview from another company I received and email from a Microsoft Recruiter. The email stated the he was interested in talking to me within the next week. I figured I would take this opportunity to chat with the recruiter to see what could come of it.
The recruiter emailed me back stating that he would like to chat on Friday, February 11th. Even though I was going on be on the road at that time, I figured it could not hurt to chat with the recruiter for a few moments, who knows that may come of the chat. During the call I was asked how I would test a keyboard. This was a very interesting question, but still a lot of fun trying to answer.
The possibilities of other potential offers came up during the call and I told the recruiter that I had another offer, but did not know the details of it yet since I had not been home since it was sent out. The recruiter mentioned that I should get back with him as soon as I found out the details of this offer. On, the morning of Monday, February 14th I contacted the recruiter and told him I honestly have one day left on the other offer, but was going to get it extended so that I could take care of some other personal issues.
Later that day the recruiter responded asking me not to accept the other offer yet and to give Microsoft a fair chance for an interview. He mentioned that I would be flown out to Redmond in the next 5 days for an interview, if that worked with my schedule. At this point, I wasn't sure how to respond, but was excited to go through the interview process.
When I broke the news to my fiancé at the time (yes, on Valentine's Day) she was not to happy about it. She would rather not have to move if we didn't have to. I told her the chances of me getting an offer were very slim, but I wanted to go through the interview process either way because it would be a great experience. She agreed that was fine so I told the recruiter that everything was a go.
On, Tuesday, February 15th I received all of the details about the trip to Redmond and found out that I would be leaving around 9:00 AM the next morning for Seattle. At this point in time I was definitely pretty excited. I was not told what team I would be interviewing with, as the team's positions change very rapidly, and I should ask my recruiter on the morning of my interview.
The trip out to Redmond was flawless. My flight got in early at SeaTac, there was no line for the rental car, and the hotel was very easy to find. That night I had some dinner, took a trip over to campus to be sure I knew where I was going (got lost in the mean time), then stayed up late (1:00 PST) trying to solve a FreeBSD LDAP authentication problem, which is pretty much all fixed.
I finally went to bed, then woke up at 4:30 AM PST (7:30 AM EST), and could not go back to sleep. So I just laid in bed thinking about what kind of questions I might be asked in a few hours and rehearsing testing and coding techniques in my head. I finally decided to get out of bed around 7:00 AM PST, checked my email, chatted with a few people, then hopped into the shower. When I got out of the shower I was greeted by a great ear piercing noise from the fire alarm. I could not smell smoke in my room or in the hallway so I casually got ready (wearing jeans, an orange long sleeve t-shirt, and my I Love C# shirt), grabbed the laptop, and headed downstairs. The moment I got to the first floor the alarm stopped (as I figured it would).
I then had a great breakfast of English muffins, tea, eggs, sausage, and waffles. Once I was done eating I went back upstairs, grabbed my computer bag, the GPS and a few other things. At this point in time it was about 8:15 and I had an hour and fifteen minutes before I had to be at the interview. I figured I would drive by a family friends house for a few to say hi before the interview because I was not sure how much time I would have after the interview to stop by. Norma was glad to see me, but had a client show up about the same time I did so we could not chat for long. I hung out at her place for a few, watched the news, then headed over to campus.