Manish’s Scribble Board

First of all congrats to Shivani Sugandha and Aman Arneja for getting selected ( or offered a post of FTE ) in Microsoft. The interview progress was very rigerous and only two out of 27 people who got shortlisted after the written exam were able to make it.

These two students deserved the offer, but what irked most was their attitude towards interviews. A guy called Ashwin P faced more than 8 hours of interview in total of 5 rounds. Guess! They said “Sorry”. WTF! If these people didnt have to take him, just say him Goodbye in the second ot third round itself. Another very shocking outcome was that of Ayush Sinha. I expected him to get through, but maybe the MS guys thought otherwise.

I met a Senior Test Manager of Visual Studio Team where I perused my internship. His name was Dinesh Bhat, though he didnt recognize me in the first instance, some minor hints made him go back two months and recollect the information. His weirdest reaction was when I said “Sir! Remember, you made the plan for movie Outing - Indiana Jones”.

Well, its time for party, booze and celebrations. Those who couldnt make it, its time to move on. Microsoft is not the only company where one can make his/her carreer.

Lots of developments have been going on of late. I dont even have time to blog on any of them. It has been a daily routine to leave room in the morning and return back around 11PM to sleep. Some of the most interesting events are MobiVision workshop, Rock’s placement, Rock On, RH MIT Campus Placement. Let me start one after another

MobiVision Workshop:

Its a special event in itself,only a few colleges in India have this kind of event. Its more into Mobile Programming. The two platforms being taught are Python on Symbian and Android from Google. The first day the turnout was more than 240 combining both the rooms. One room had Symbian lectures and other had Android. The Symbian part was a bit easy as python is a scripting language wheras Android is on Java which is complied language. The layout is to be designed through XML which is something quite tough to teach first timers. Three days have passed and hope this enthu is alive.

Rock’s Placement:

One of the most happening event of late. Our own Ankur Bansal got placed in CSC with a nice package. This was one of the most relieved moment as many of us were sceptial about his future. CSC made a heart winning announcement to pick up all 17 students who were shortlisted for interview.

Rock On:

One of the most exciting and awaited movie at this time. We had our PeP test on 31st and then headed straight to Aashirvaad theatre at Udupi. The hall is not A/C and it was really a tough job to sit for more than 2 hours in such a stuffy place. We watched the whole movie sweating and sweating. The movie was quite slow but awesome. Arjun Rampal’s acting as a failed guitarist stole the show. Kudos to Shankar Ehsaan Loy for their mind blowing music. All its music tracks are always on my lips

RH MIT Placement:

Racked Hosting visited MIT on 30th of August for posts of Designers, System Administrators and PHP Coders. The nearby college NMAMIT or more famously NITTE were also invited for the placement. The results were really depressing, such a horrible performance. They did return back without a single selection though two people did perform well, but still not considered upto the mark.

I landed on Manipal on 28th last month and since then just running pillar to pillar. In these last two weeks I didnt leave a single stone unturned to get a job but alas!

As I reached Manipal on 28th morning around 11:30, had a bath and rushed for Sungard exam, but didnt expect much in such a hassle. As usual rejected. Next aim was Cisco which was on 30th. It was very much shocking to see how people madly sat for this company and only 27 got shorlisted for interviews including me. The interviews were worst and all kinds of hardware and weird questions were asked (maybe to reject me). When result were announced I was sure not to be in the list.

Next was Juniper on 1st last week. The written paper went quite well except that I didnt get much time for apti section where I didnt attempt more than 4-5 questions correctly, rest all were guesses. This was one of the exams where I expected much and papers went perfect, still not chance of hope.

The biggest one of all - Yahoo came on 4th of this week. I cleared the written round which contained 20 questions plus one subjective question. Next milestone was a coding round in lab. This was the place where I performed the worst when it comes to output but best when it came to algoritm used. This round cleared and we were advanced to 1st technical interview on the same night. When my chance came, the interview lasted some 40 minutes where I was drilled on UNIX for some 25-30 minutes. Now we 6 people advanced to final round next day. The 2nd technical interview was more than an hour in span where the guy asked me lots of questions but less of PHP,MySQL,UNIX and those stuffs. He liked puzzles, book questions and theory. I tried my best to cope up with such bookish knowledge and succeeded to some extent. At that time my expectations were quite high. Result were declared after an hour and the only word which came to my mind was “Which is the next company”. I have faced 5 rejections in 10 days, its a record in itself

So Folks! Interview results are out! Kicked out in the first round itself, though am not surprised ( had performed badly). Well leave it, no point discussing the same thing. I was told that am “Not Upto the Mark” as per Microsoft standards.

I was supposed to give a demo at 2PM today in Conference Room about my work which I did for the last two months. The presentation was for around forty minutes out of which I presented for around half an hour and last ten minutes were left discussing about the various design issues. I had made a small power point presentation to make the show a bit lively hoping that it can add interest. I had thought of many things which I would be telling only to find my mentor picking up the questions and answering them.

When I came back to my machine, I tried writing a funky but proper “Last Day at Work” mail. This is what I had written.

Hi everybody,

I would like to inform all that today is my last day of work at MSIDC. I was working as an intern in this group.

I would like to thank each and every person for the love and affection which they have shown during all the eight weeks which made my stay a really memorable one. I am very excited to return back to college with a tag of being a MS Intern. This really counts.

I would like to wish all of you best of luck for your future and would surely love to be in contact even after this internship.

Briefly describing myself: Am a student at Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal , Karanataka. Well what more to say of academics? I have decent grades and good reputation, but what I felt was that grades don’t matter in life (personal experiences).

My personal e-mail ID is manishsinha27 {at} gmail  {dot} com .

Regards,

Manish Sinha

My mentor called me up in his chamber to brief about the review and say some parting words As he thinks my strength is that am Committed and Hard Working. These two words gave me a great shock! I never came to office before 12:30-1:00 in the afternoon and never reported him on time after completion of work. Another strength was that I “never crashed in the work which has been assigned and somehow finished it howsoever unusual it ought to be”. This I can agree to some extent, though its the thing which made me work patiently for last two months.

Now coming to weakness… “I don’t have communication skills!”. Okay! “I don’t test my code for all test cases and half of the time its not running even though the algorithm is quite good”.

I would be leaving for college tomorrow night. Its actualy a break journey from Hyderabad to Banaglore and from there to Mangalore. There is also a 10 hrs gap between both the trains, which time is quite difficult to pass. Going back to college, I would be sitting for most of the companies including Sungard which is coming on 28th-Monday, Cisco on 30th-Wednesday, Yahoo on 4th-Monday, Toshiba on 7th-Thursday and Philips Innovation on 11th-Monday. No! I have no intention to take all, this list is only for those which I have registered.

See you in Manipal soon. Now wish me a Happy Journey!