Wanted to share my interview experience for a technical PM L64 with Microsoft Azure in Redmond, WA. Phone screen with hiring manager went great then heard back from recruiters 10-15 days after to schedule loop interview. I had my interview loop this week and I can say that I met the worst team in Microsoft totally garbage. The principal of the team was the first on my loop. He asked the “why Microsoft question” and i replied really well to it. Then he said “ Do you know that we pay less than Amazon. Why are you leaving a lucrative pay to join us”. I didnt expect and have never experienced this kind of talk in an interview. The dude was like 60+ year old and have been at Mcsft for 15 years he seemed really bored of his work. Second interviewer was the skip manager, again super rude old dude who has been in the company for 10 years+. I introduced my self and explained what I do at Amazon and asked if he was familiar with the Amazon product that I work on and his reply was “I dont use Amazon and I boycott all their services”. WTF is this he could have easily said that he is not familiar with the product. Then he happened to worked at my old employer but it was before my time, so he told me to ask my old teammates about him before I join. What an arrogant POS , i didnt expect this knowing that Microsoft always care about culture. The rest of the loop was with team members who were really nice. Overall I think I nailed the technical aspect of the interview. But I really dont want the job after meeting with the managers. Yes Amazon culture is toxic and not the best but this team is another level to me. Not in a million year would I join this team. For the first time, I appreciate Amazon’s professional interviewing experience. YOE: 10 YOE in Amazon: 2
Sounds like they’re on Blind
Microsoft cares about culture? Wow! You are so naive! This is second only to Amazon in terms of rotten culture. The load of you guys getting pip’d and coming to Microsoft also don’t help the case.
It’s really that bad?
About 12 years ago, Microsoft was the poster child of bad culture in the tech industry lead by the a**hole Bill Gates. You may want to dig up Some articles from the past. Over the last decade Amazon has set the bar higher. Basically, Microsoft did not make any shift but Amazon just made Microsoft look a lot better. Make no mistake, none of the Seattle based companies are gold standard for culture. They are in fact the far opposite.
Thats horrible… What did the technical aspect consist of?
My interview experience with Amazon was a hot ass mess.
Aaj the legacy of Balmer era
Wow that was rough. Amazon insistence on a good candidate experience is something I really appreciate and like.
Yup plus the loop members are always professional. The principal was trash talking Amazon, may be he couldnt make it through phone screening? Haha
Fwiw, I have heard and at least have one first hand bad experience at Amazon. So things could vary with a company of that size. That being said, Microsoft as a policy also prioritizes interview experience. This must an outlier unfortunately so you did the right thing. But please don't assume and form perspective of an entire company from one experience. To give you a comparative narrative, interviewed at Amazon for a manager in a different life. Went through a coding tech screen, which I passed, but then they said it had to be a different one for a manager. 3 times rescheduled (twice missed actually, meaning the interviewer didnt show up, kept me waiting and only afterwards recruiter responded). Spoke to the hiring manager who acknowledged this was bad. Eventually they set up a screen with an interviewer who was a senior engineer, not a manager. Half the time their response was, I am not a manager so I can't answer that. The other half, ' but when you built that service ...' I was like it was not a service as I explained before, just a different piece of software, like a client library or a piece of infrastructure that people consumed by hosting on it or might be a part of a larger monolith, not a service. Apparently to them that was just not possible and every thing in software world had to be a service. Suffice to say, didn't end well. But I am sure most Amazon interviews aren't that way.