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February 03, 2005
David Weise
Larry Osterman blogged about David Weise leaving Microsoft.When I was a senior in college, I very much wanted to work for Microsoft. I carefully noted the date in January 1988 that Microsoft was coming to Princeton to do on-campus interviews, and on the first day you could sign up for interview slots, I rushed down to Career Services to get one (companies coming to Princeton usually either allowed first-come-first-served open signups, or else prescreened resumes to choose who they would interview. Microsoft used open signups).
A fellow student who had interned at Microsoft the previous summer told me that Microsoft was having a dinner for former interns (who all had guaranteed full-time job offers) and they had said he could invite anyone else he felt would be interested. Of course I was interested, so I cadged an invite. Microsoft was taking us to Lahiere's, the fanciest restaurant in town, and better yet was footing the bill.
Two of the Microsoft employees present had PhDs from Princeton: Nathan Myhrvold and David Weise. This was one of the first employer-paid meals I had eaten, and I debated whether ordering caviar would compromise my chances of being hired. Nathan Myhrvold, bless his gourmet heart, solved the problem by ordering some for the table.
The actual interviews were the next day and David Weise was my interviewee. These were the quick half-hour interviews that decided if Microsoft would fly you back to Redmond. Microsoft was famous back then as the only company that asked candidates to write actual programs during these interviews, and sure enough David Weise asked me to write the code to computer the Nth Fibonacci number. I managed that with no trouble, but then he asked me what the running time was (as in, O(N log N) etc). I flailed at this for a bit before he told me that the answer was O(Fibonacci). Yeesh. Despite this, I did get the flyback to Redmond (but didn't get the job that time).
The other thing I remember about the interview on campus was that I was wearing a tie and the first thing David Weise said was that he was glad he didn't work at a company that made him wear a tie because it cut off the blood flow to your brain.
Posted by AdamBa at February 3, 2005 09:32 PM
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Comments
That comment (about the necktie cutting off the flow of oxygen to your brain) is SO David. :)
Posted by: Larry Osterman at February 4, 2005 06:54 AM
