Former Microsoft boss' favourite interview question

[rietrot]

The amount is arbitrary and frequency is purely illustrative. What would you do if this was a million dollars? What would you do if this was as is, but you have to play it a million times?

If it was a million dollars I would never play, unless victory is 100% guaranteed and even then I would be really sceptical about what's the catch.

With a large amount of repetitions I would play if the balance of probabilities works out in my favour over time, which doesn't apear to be the case here.

Discussing these configurations, strategies and ways to quantify risk and reward for each are implicitly part of the question.

Sure. If you say so. But it would not be obvious to me in a interview. but I would describe myself as bad at taking interviews.

 

[longboy]

The first question I always ask in an interview is "What is your reaction if you turn around right now, and there is an unknown man with a sidearm pointed at you?" You have 5 seconds to answer.

The answers will reflect personality, critical thinking, thought processes during stress and planning.

 

[cguy]

If it was a million dollars I would never play, unless victory is 100% guaranteed and even then I would be really sceptical about what's the catch.

With a large amount of repetitions I would play if the balance of probabilities works out in my favour over time, which doesn't apear to be the case here.


Sure. If you say so. But it would not be obvious to me in a interview. but I would describe myself as bad at taking interviews.

Your intuition is mostly correct. In a quantitative interview you would be asked to put hard numbers on it. It would make statistical sense to bet on the first one if you were rich enough, since there is positive expectation, but also a higher chance of losing than winning (but you win more when you win).

The strange thing, is that unless I’ve made a calculation error, 1 million repetitions would give you around $20k of returns. I’m not sure why Balmer suggests this is a loss game.

As for the questions - all of these are designed to lead down some set of paths of discussions and follow up questions. When a candidate branches off into something new and exciting, their chances of getting hired increases immensely.

 

[rietrot]

The first question I always ask in an interview is "What is your reaction if you turn around right now, and there is an unknown man with a sidearm pointed at you?" You have 5 seconds to answer.

The answers will reflect personality, critical thinking, thought processes during stress and planning.

Just another day in SA calmly hand over my phone and wallet.

 

[CataclysmZA]

A big issue is that after being so long in the industry people start to think on a purely technical level and forget the constraints and parameters of the actual field. This is a prime example where the only consideration is what the odds and outcome would be if the most logical method is employed.

If this question was really asked in MSFT interviews, then that explains why they chose to design and build Windows 10 with data-driven analyses, pock-marked by small projects that have a rather niche audience due to their obscurity, rather than actually make something most people would like.

 

[RandomGeek]

Just another day in SA calmly hand over my phone and wallet.

Invite him to parliament, from there he can legally and without violence rob the citizens

 

[MrGray]

He's not trying to (just) figure out whether or not you know an algorithm for a binary search, he's trying to figure out if you realize that this is an adversarial situation, and that if you can guess your opponents strategy, you can do better than a binary search.

Yes, it makes sense if you're trying to hire a wily sociopath who's first instinct is to distrust other's motives and consider every engagement adversarial. In reality, we all know that 99.9% of the people they hire are there to update icons on Outlook every year or re-shuffle the Azure portal menu again.

 

[rietrot]

Yes, it makes sense if you're trying to hire a wily sociopath who's first instinct is to distrust other's motives and consider every engagement adversarial. In reality, we all know that 99.9% of the people they hire are there to update icons on Outlook every year or re-shuffle the Azure portal menu again.

Uhm we are talking upper management here.

They are there to strategize long term.
Which means talk shít in meeting all they. They don't know about icons or menus.

 

[Ninja'd]

42

 

[markings]

The question is – do you want to play or not? It is not whether one knows a specific method. The answer for the applicant is either yes or no but is essentially irrelevant because the interviewer gets an answer by watching how much the applicant squirms and tries to figure it out. A follow-up question could be how one arrived at the answer.
However I wonder how many interviewers are qualified to read something significant out of this, which is essentially body language.

 

[ponder]

The question is – do you want to play or not?

Most people seem to have missed this...

It shouldn't take you more than 2 seconds to say 'no'. I'm not interested in your methodology (unless you're psychic), you're wasting my time if you say 'yes'.

 

[cguy]

Yes, it makes sense if you're trying to hire a wily sociopath who's first instinct is to distrust other's motives and consider every engagement adversarial. In reality, we all know that 99.9% of the people they hire are there to update icons on Outlook every year or re-shuffle the Azure portal menu again.

You are literally told it’s adversarial from the beginning: One of you will lose money, the other one will win money.

You really have no clue what happens in companies like Microsoft at all.

 

[cguy]

If that makes you sleep better, then cool.
I stand by my opinion that he's not getting what he thinks he is from the question.

You’re welcome to your own opinion of course, but you should probably be a bit less dismissive of the opinion of those who have actually been on the other side of the table, in the same environment, several thousand times.

 

[cguy]

The question is – do you want to play or not? It is not whether one knows a specific method. The answer for the applicant is either yes or no but is essentially irrelevant because the interviewer gets an answer by watching how much the applicant squirms and tries to figure it out. A follow-up question could be how one arrived at the answer.
However I wonder how many interviewers are qualified to read something significant out of this, which is essentially body language.

You are supposed to walk the interviewer through your reasoning.

 

[Unreal]

Yea that was a waste of time.
He failed to address risk appetite. (he said the answer he wants is for the person to say no)

I know from a mathematical point of view to not play that game, but I also know myself and I am willing to take the risk.

True, entrepreneurs would have a very different take. If I don’t play, I can’t make any money. I might lose money, but I might also make money.
Wait a minute- are entrepreneurs in the same Whataspp group as gamblers
Balmer might be right

 

[cguy]

True, entrepreneurs would have a very different take. If I don’t play, I can’t make any money. I might lose money, but I might also make money.
Wait a minute- are entrepreneurs in the same Whataspp group as gamblers
Balmer might be right

There's a difference between taking a risk with positive expectation, and taking a risk with negative expectation. You will, on average, lose money on the latter. Relating it to entrepreneurism, it's the equivalent of "That sounds like a horrible idea. Let's do it!".

 

[cguy]

On the other side of the table?
LMAO
View attachment 944006

Approx. 20 years experience interviewing and hiring technical candidates at US companies valued at 10-100’s of billions of dollars.

Not sure why that’s funny...

 

[cguy]

It's frigging hilarious that you think it qualifies him to be the authority on interviewing and hiring.

You don't think that a person integral to the success of the worlds most successful software company would be an authority on interviewing and hiring? It's not like I am making an appeal to authority here anyway: First, you miss the the entire point of the question - as though, asking "how", is something this "twit" has never thought of, when it reality, "how" and why is asked as a follow up, every single time. Then you propose "he should really have told you he didn't pick it at random", which is really, just dumbing the question down.

The opinion you were dismissive of was mine - the one that I justified by explaining how the answer to such a question would typically unfold. I am the person with thousands of US technical interviews, thousands of post-mortems, hundreds of hiring strategy and methodology meetings, participating in retroactive studies correlating hires to prior interview performance, etc., all in the gigantic big tech environment with super-high hiring bars.

 

[cguy]

View attachment 944106

View attachment 944108

Ballmer was at the helm from around 2000 to 2014. He replaced almost every division head while there and somehow they completely missed the mobile boat.
I don't think a nose for talent was what he was famous for.

MS share price during Ballmers tenure:

View attachment 944112

For comparison:
Apple:
View attachment 944114

Google:
View attachment 944116

The whole nasdaq followed that curve, and the other arguments show a basic base rate error - you're not going to have the same rate of growth when your company is already worth hundreds of billions of dollars.


If you really want to make the argument, that the magna cum laude Harvard graduate who is the 6th wealthiest man in the world, who as Executive VP, President before becoming CEO, from inception to ~$500Billion dollar Market Cap (before he became CEO), is some sort of twit, feel free to do that, but I would strongly recommend coming down to earth for a bit.

 

[cguy]

We disagree.
And no, the Nasdaq performed considerably better from 2000-2014.
Besides, rather compare Apples with Microsofts... Or Googles or other tech stock.

You’re making the base rate fallacy again. If Microsoft grew at that rate it would be even more enormous. The fact that you see being the 2nd largest tech company on the world at $1.5T today or $500B then as some sort of failure is utterly absurd.