Remember Adam Barr, the "Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters" guy? (If not, he is an ex-Microsoft programmer who wrote a book in part about the Microsoft hiring process, my continuing pet obsession) I really liked his response in Scobleizer's comments this morning to Trust Your Instinct by some VB.NET guy. This brings to mind my favorite Malcolm Gladwell article The New-Boy Network: What do job interviews really tell us? which examines how the interviewer's "gut feeling" or "instinct" can cloud their judgement of talent.

In a related story, thanks to Pat for writing me a great Microsoft referral (he's been down there for his last two co-op terms and now has a full time offer) which actually got me a phone interview. Last Friday I talked to Stacey, the MS recruiter responsible for UW, for about an hour (it was supposed to be a 20 minute call -- I guess that's a good sign). Here's a little point form summary:

• What's your definition of "smart" ? Who do you know that fits this definition? Do you consider yourself smart under this definition?
• Design: Suppose Disney World were to distribute Pocket PCs with wi-fi to visitors upon entrance to the park. What features can you imagine the budled software having?
• Coding: Describe how you would write a function that, given a C string, returns a pointer to the first repeated character. eg "abca" returns the 2nd 'a'. Explain the pros and cons of your solution.
• Why do you want to work for Microsoft? What projects/areas are you interested in?

The amazing thing is that I didn't totally screw these simple questions up. In fact, she called ME back Monday afternoon! We'll see where things go from here.

And now for something completely different, via Matt, Le Tigre's song Get Off the Internet (Pop-up warning). The chorus immediately evokes memories of being 12 years old dialing into MBNet at 2400bps, having your Mom pick up the phone to make a call, but instead of a dialtone hearing the carrier signal and screaming down the stairs at you to Get off ...