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Note: I wrote this about five days ago, right after I got back from Seattle.

I spent this past weekend in Seattle… what a blast. I loved hanging out with my cousin and his new wife. Everytime I’m with my cousin I remember the good times when we used to be in India. Now he’s got a great job, a wife, a car, a house. It’s truly amazing how quickly time passes. The only real downer this weekend was that Northwest lost my baggage on my way to Sea-Tac. That sucked.. I had to basically wear the same clothes for the two days after that (including during the interviews).

The night before my interviews was weird… I slept well, but I had two nightmares — 1) I missed my interviews and 2) I made a fool of myself at the interviews. I woke up in a state of panic/disillusionment/confusion/relief. In that order. Anyways, I got ready (didn’t have much of a selection of clothes), and we headed over to Microsoft’s campus in Redmond.

I remembered it exactly as I left it two years ago when I interviewed as a freshman. That was a harrowing experience — I basically got screwed in the first interview when they asked me to code a string-wrapping solution, and I took the brute-force approach. The interview after that was with a guy who had worked with Microsoft for 10 years; I felt like a toddler when I tried to explain to him the differences between Java and C++. The interview after that was basically trying to explain how an XML parser would work. Either way, as a freshman I didn’t know much and alas, I was too young and the experience turned out to be nothing more than humbling.

This time was different… drastically different. After losing out on a greuling, stressful interview process with Amazon (I went through three technical interviews — I made it to the “bar-raiser” — but didn’t get an offer), I decided to approach the Microsoft interviews with a sense of “try my best” and “think through everything”. More importantly, I was able to de-stress myself by taking the entire thing as a multiple-step process.

I met with the HR rep and I had a fun conversation with her — I felt relaxed and explained my reasons that I was interested in Microsoft. Throughout the rest of the day I would realize more of those interests. She told me that I’d be interviewing with the WinFS team (a truly revolutionary filesystem) and the XML Runtime team; my goal was to get dual offers. She led me outside to the recruitment shuttle and I headed off to my first interview. The recruitment shuttles are pretty sweet — completely electric cars (I think modified Prius’?) with dashboard panels that display stats on the entire car — it’s battery, etc.

The first interview was with a lively developer who was really interested in my past experience. I told him about my research in abstracting web frameworks as well as the software engineering project I’m working on. He was really friendly, and when I ruefully explained my baggage situation and addressed the fact I was dressed so poorly, he stopped and said not to worry, as he pointed to some pretty large ink blotches on the pockets of his jeans. We talked through some team-based scenarios first. Eventually he got to the coding question, which turned out to be more of a design question. It was an interesting problem that required me to find the problem first, and then the solution (Usually in computer science we’re given the problem and asked to find the solution). Eventually I solved it, and I was happy with my solution, but gave a few alternatives and analyzed time/space complexities.

The next interview was my favorite — a super-friendly developer who looked like he had been in the game for a while. He was old, but extremely knowledgable; his office was filled with books on various topics of computer science. We had a great conversation, and I explained to him a few projects I had done as well as some current projects. He asked me to describe Ajax, since he wasn’t extremely familiar with it. So I tried to take a descriptive, high-level approach by drawing state diagrams and such. I gave him an example, delineated my theories on the history of Ajax, and explained to him the problems associated with Ajax and how developers can address them. He seemed satisfied. He then asked me to write some code — specifically, to find the first non-unique character in a sentence. I thought for a bit and gave an O(n) solution, and then coded it on the whiteboard in front of him. I analyzed boundary conditions, and talked about some of the limitations. He guided me to some other limitations later on, but remarked that it was a good algorithm. It was definitely an interesting problem, and there were lots of complex issues involved.

My next interview was with an Indian guy. I was scared. He was the real bar-raiser, and asked me if I knew topics relating to Operating Systems. Unfortunately I am not taking an OS course until the Fall, so I was shaky on some of the concepts. I knew a little about thread programming, but not a lot. Fortunately, I was able to explain the concept of deadlock and how we can resolve it. He eventually pushed me towards a better solution. He asked me to code a solution to a simple problem, but what threw me off course was the fact that I had to explain all boundary conditions as I coded the solution. That was rough, but I made it through eventually.

After the third interview, I was basically sitting in the lobby and wondering if I did well. After some time, an elderly Indian man walked out and introduced himself. This was my final interview, with the guy who managed the three previous interviewers. This PM was amazing — his team includes some people who are known in the industry for their inventions, including Ajax. I knew this was the final interview, so I basically tried my hardest to show my passion and ideas regarding the state of technology. Our interview was about an hour and a half, and I had conversations with him about a wide variety of topics — how my interviews went, what I feel is most important about being on a team, what I’d like to do at Microsoft, what I think is the next big innovation on the Web (I gave two), and the general state of technology. I was asked to write some code — to reverse a linked list. I did it in O(n), and although I did it hastily, I stepped through the code for a couple of cases. He seemed pleased, and then asked me to code another problem — pretty interesting one actually, and it was more math than computer-related. I eventually got it and we took a break — I asked a few questions, and we had a light-hearted conversation. Ultimately, the interview ended and he called a recruitment shuttle for me to head back to the recruitment building.

All in all, I think I tried my best. I learned _a lot_. I had thought so much the entire day that my head was pounding by the time my interviews were over (they had gone from 12pm to 6pm). At least relative to my dreams the night before, I think I did pretty well. By the time the day ended, I had a newfound respect for Microsoft (not that I didn’t have one before). Here’s a company that takes a lot of crap from people about the stability, usability of their software, when ultimately they have a profound impact on the world. Hundreds of millions of people use Windows XP.Why? Because Microsoft knows their users the best. I am a huge fan of open source, but I have to acquiesce that open source is not a user-centric approach. It is a community effort among developers, but it is detached from the rest of the world. I think though, we’re starting to see more of a convergence with amazing software like Firefox and several other open source projects focused on attracting the common user. IBM as well has respectfully adopted open source, and the backing of a successful company like that is without a doubt going to result in something great. No matter what happens in the end, I’ve come to respect both fronts. In the end, we’re all developers, architects, designers, and managers, working for the common goal of creating software that helps people — I’m just humbled to be working with the major players in the game.
Crossing my fingers and hoping for the best…

*Update: 2/25/06 | 3:26 AM: I got an offer from Microsoft. I’ll be hanging out with my cousin and working in Seattle this summer :]

A couple of weeks ago, a friend (he worked on a different project at IBM Extreme Blue last summer) and I applied to Paul Graham’s YCombinator. It sounded really cool; if we were accepted, we would instantly get our own company incorporated and receive funding from a venture capitalist angel. We’d spend three months working in Cambridge, Massachusetts to develop a powerful product that would allow our company to hopefully be bought by some of the heavy hitters in the industry (Microsoft/Google/Yahoo). We spent a month basically researching and planning before we wrote up the application defining our product. We originally had one other person in it, but he backed out at the last minute. So last night, we basically found out. Probably in the wierdest/saddest way possible:

23:48: Phil calls. He says that he heard back from YCombinator, and he’s going to paste the email to me in an IM. Before he pastes it he says “it doesn’t look like they were in our favor…”. And then he pastes it:

(23:49:02) phil: Your proposal looks promising and we’d like to meet you in person. See http://ycombinator.com/interviews.html for details. We’ll send follow-up emails with specific interview slots soon. See you in Mountain View, Y Combinator Staff
(23:52:24) phil: http://ycombinator.com/interviews.html

At this point, i’m saying “holy sh*t” several times over, taking a deep breath, and trying really hard not to get a heart attack. I go outside on the balcony to call my Dad, I call my Mom. I’m going crazy. Then I come back to my room.

(00:03:57) phil: hey, are you there?
(00:05:30) phil: call me when you get this IM
(00:08:51) adi: hey
(00:08:52) adi: yeah i’m here
(00:09:03) phil: dude
(00:09:08) phil: they just sent me _another_ email
(00:09:09) phil: :
(00:09:17) phil: worst thing I’ve ever seen
(00:09:19) phil: You were recently sent an email with an invitation to an interview. This was due an error in managing lists of email addresses. Below is the email you should have received:
(00:09:23) phil: We’re sorry to say that we can’t accept your proposal for the Summer Founders Program. Please don’t take it personally, because most of the proposals we rejected, we rejected for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the applicants. For example, we were very reluctant to accept any proposals with only one founder, because we think starting a startup is too much work for one person. We also rejected a lot of proposals simply because we couldn’t understand them, or didn’t understand the problem domain well enough to judge them, or because the project seemed too big to start on only three months of funding.
(00:09:28) phil: We realize this process is fraught with error. It’s practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we’d appreciate it if you’d send us an email making fun of us; we want to learn from our mistakes. Thanks Y Combinator Staff
(00:09:54) phil: I wonder how many people they made that mistake with
(00:10:00) adi: oh my god
(00:10:00) phil: there were shouts of joy around the country a few minutes ago
(00:10:03) phil: and now dispair
(00:11:21) adi: no way
(00:11:33) phil: utter rejection
(00:17:23) adi: that’s even worse than rejection
(00:17:31) phil: much worse
(00:17:40) phil: maybe that means we were some ind of finalist or something
(00:18:01) adi: maybe
(00:24:08) adi: the fact that they did something like this doesn’t speak well for themselves
(00:24:48) phil: no, not at all.

I was forwarded both emails later on, and confirmed it. I also realized that the headers of the screwed up emails were coming from http://www.anybot.com, a product that was created through YCombinator. How ironic. A few minutes later, I go to digg.com and another wave of irony swept over me:

Google had just made their Page Creator public — this was exactly the type of application we wanted to build. Of course, we had known about the rumors (it was codenamed Trogdor at the time we were writing the application), and we put in something small in our application that said that Yahoo, Microsoft, or other competitors could look to buy our application in competition with Google.

Oh well. I suppose we really did have a great idea if it was designed and implemented by Google. A few days ago my dad told me a line i’ve heard many times — everything happens for a reason. I guess I am too young to attempt startups and all the glory associated with them. I definitely need more industry experience. We’ll see what happens. Either way, I’m glad Google created something like this. It’s definitely an amazing product, and I hope lots of people use it.

I don’t usually post about political topics, but I guess this can be an exception. If you haven’t heard about the blasphemous cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, you’ve been living under a rock. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve read a fair amount of news stories and blogs regarding the cartoons. Many of them give a simple overview of the situation, and pose a seemingly mocking question: Why all this over a few cartoons?

The two sides of this story are extremely complex. I for one, do not side with violence. I do not agree with the 15 deaths that occurred recently, and I don’t believe that violence solves anything. To react in the manner that many people did is simply wrong. I definitely believe that the protesters are easily playing into the hands of those who side with the cartoons by promoting violence. They should instead demonstrate peacefully, and show the world that free speech includes respect and maturity. On the other hand, I don’t particularly side with Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published the cartoons. Let’s kinda simplify the situation a little.

1. Jyllands-Posten publishes 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. One of them depicts him with a bomb in his turban, obviously attempting to draw a scornful link with terrorism and the Muslim world.

2. Initial reactions are muted, but two weeks later, 3,500 people peacefully demonstrate in Copenhagen.

3. Jyllands-Posten republishes the cartoons, and three other cartoons emerge. One, in mind-numbing disrespect, shows the Prophet Muhammad with a pig’s nose.

4. You can read about what happens next in your newspaper.

The fact that a respected media source publishes something so blasphemous and disrespectful in the name of “free speech” is completely ridiculous. Imagine how you would feel if a respected newspaper publishes cartoons of your God or Gods seducing prostitutes, or fostering terrorism in the name of free speech (by the way, these are what the actual cartoons implied), and then RE-PUBLISHES them. Sure, you can say that these are just cartoons. So take a look at them before you pass judgment…

The Daily Tarheel recently printed their own cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, in pure tasteless fashion.
If you are a respected media source that serves the world, there are certain responsibilities you have to uphold. To tout free speech by insulting another religion is just simply wrong. Free speech is not just “free speech”, the phrase. It is a concept, an ideal extracted from the larger ideal of collaboration and unity — concepts that are quickly becoming increasingly important in the context of globalization. We are not simple machines that take in the phrase “free speech” and output everything and anything we want. We are humans who understand that free speech was created for the good of humanity — not just some tool that we can throw around.

“CNN International will launch a major overhaul of its on-screen presentation on February 5 in a move described as a “radical move away from the cluttered screens and heavy graphics that currently prevail in today’s rolling news and business networks.”

Click here for the full article.