Notes from a Dozen Software Interviews

When I graduated from MIT in 2008, I failed many job interviews. I claimed "The people hired over me are not better. They are just good at interviewing." My poor attitude kept the number of job offers at zero. Eventually I learned that all of my successful classmates had spent time to prepare. So I solved a few practice problems and landed a job with Microsoft in Redmond.

Fast forward to the summer of 2014, I passed 9 out of 10 screening interviews (only failed the first one) and received multiple amazing offers within three weeks. Linked below is a collection of tips and every interview question I was asked. I hope you can achieve greater success.

Table of Contents

1. Interview questions
2. Getting Interviews
3. Preparing for Interviews
4. Three tips no one else will tell you
5. More comprehensive list of tips and notes

Questions? Comments? Tweet to @kelukelugames



Without my friends I wouldn't have passed gotten any interviews in the first place. In no particular order, I would like to thank: Darene, Rajesh, Jeff, Danny, Brian, Megha, Chinese Mark, German Mark, Sameer, Alex, Andrew, Marcus, Roger, Rich, Shahaf, Ravi, David, Robert, BJ, Davut, Lei, Hung, Joel, Aish, Thomas, Makarand, Ravi, Ashok, Mike, Mihir, Vu, Pavan, Zoltan. And a big thank you to all recruiters, interviewers, and hiring managers for giving me a chance.

Lastly, without my loving girlfriend Anny, I would have given up a long time ago.