This is a condensed version of what happened with me during my 12 weeks in Redmond.

• Microsoft organized a lot of events for the interns – from big scale ones (21 buses, 2 concerts, lots of food and a free 8 GB Zune for everyone), through smaller ones (a few buses to Mount Rainier) to family-scale ones (some ice cream and free t-shirts for the international interns)
• I was working in the Windows Shell Test team, integrating some UI automation stuff into a bigger framework (the details are covered by the NDA I signed, sorry…)
• Mark Russinovich signed me a copy of Windows Internals book
• I saw Raymond Chen’s office. Raymond was not there when I walked by…
• I had a read only access to Windows 7 source code and daily builds. Windows 7 is awesome and MinWin rocks :)
• Mario Hewardt signed me a copy of Advanced Windows Debugging
• I had access to Office 14 builds (yes, they are skipping Office 13)
• I saw Steve Ballmer from, like, 2 meters away
• I played bowling with Jon DeVaan
• My team was working on Windows Vista SP2
• Dave Cutler, the father of Windows NT kernel, had his office in the same building and on the same floor as I had. He signed me a box of Windows NT 4
• Dev10 (the next Visual Studio) will kick your behind
• I didn’t see Bill Gates, but I saw his house (well, I biked to the gate of his house, to be more specific; no fanfares and no warm welcome from Bill’s side)
• I had access to Microsoft Company store, where you can buy Microsoft merchandise and software for funny prices
• I had time to do explorations of neighborhood (Seattle, Vancouver,…)
• Microsoft paid for me a health club. The club (Pro Sports Club) was the best I have ever seen.

All in all, it was a great summer. Microsoft gave me an offer for another internship the next summer, which I accepted. If you are still a student, give it a try and we might see each other in June 2009 :).

After a few weeks of waiting I got a call from the Czech Microsoft office saying that they like my CV and they are sending it to Redmond for further evaluation. I was happy, but still – had no reason for celebrations :). A few weeks passed until I received an e-mail from Redmond asking me several questions about my background (my motivation, programming proficiency, how much code did I write within the last year and stuff like that). I sent them all my answers and waited impatiently for a reply.

The phone interview

After a week or so, I received an e-mail with a telephone interview arrangement. Now it all started getting serious. I searched the whole internet for any hints on telephone interviews, prepared a sheet of paper with all possible questions, printed out my CV and even started brushing up my english a bit.

To my surprise, the interview went quite well. Again, there were some questions about my background and motivation and a simple problem-solving question. No “real” technical questions at all. Still, I had a pretty bad feeling about it. My answers could definitely be better and I felt that I didn’t say anything that would distinguish me from the other candidates.

In-person interview

A few weeks of radio silence followed. I started to be a bit worried that after the disastrous phone interview I am not even worth to get an e-mail telling me that I didn’t meet their expectations. Then I received an e-mail with subject “Microsoft Internship Interview Preparation – Warsaw”.

It was an invitation for an in-person interview with people from Redmond on their International Recruiting Trip in Warsaw, Poland!

The in-person interview was challenging. The interview took place in the Warsaw Microsoft office, which is a nice building about 10 kilometers from the city centre. I met 6 other internship candidates, 2 from Czech Republic, 2 from Romania and 2 from Bulgaria. I was the only one from Slovakia (the interviews were scheduled for two days and if I remember well, about 40 candidates were invited to Warsaw altogether).

I interviewed with 3 people – Holly (technical recruiter), Phil (manager from the Speech Recognition team) and Tom (developer from the “Clouds” team).

During the interview I had to write code on paper, explain my approach, design several tests and even solve puzzles (variations on the Pigeonhole principle). Even thought one interview took only 20 minutes (so 3*20 minutes together), it was exhausting.

The rest of my trip to Warsaw was fun, too. I had time for some explorations of the city and I took many pictures. The best thing about it – Microsoft paid all the hotel and travel expenses :).

Interview results

The results of my interview came in about two weeks later. I was really anxious about opening the e-mail. I really wished to get there. So I opened with jittering hands just to find out I received an offer! An offer for a SDET position at the Windows Serviceability team! Probably the best place I could get!

If everything goes well, I will start in the middle of june. So – see you in Redmond :)!

With my parents and my brother, I spent a week at our cottage in Low Tatras. I finally got the chance to charge my internal batteries.

After returning from the mountains a friend asked me if I would join him on his trip to Prague. He has never been there before and I just could not say no. The trip was perfect and I’ve got some nice pictures, so maybe I’ll post them somewhere.

Anyway – I promise, I will write more content for this blog now and I will also try keeping it less personal and more technical. I’ve got some fun things on the burner, so stay tuned.