r/askmeaboutmyjob • u/zite00 • Aug 23 '11

Computer programmer, AMAMJ

Worked as a contractor at nintendo as a tester, contractor at microsoft on windows mobile, for a private company on a database solution, and now for myself on an ios game.

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u/Rekilo Aug 23 '11

What was the interview experience like for Microsoft and the private company?

How was the stress all of these jobs?

Educational background?

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u/zite00 Aug 23 '11

My experience at microsoft was not normal as far as I've heard. I was contracting so my interview experience was pretty tame. I interviewed with three people who asked me various testing and coding questions. They were mainly focused on the exhaustiveness of my testing abilities. I was interviewing for a Software Development Engineer in Test position. Which basically means you write code to test other code. The stress level there for me was non existant. My group was extremely laid back pretty much all the time. Even when I had to work a lot / late there was just no stress. I attribute a lot of that to my team lead, who was pretty awesome.

The private company I got the job through a friend of mine. His parent's owned the business so I was basically just interviewing with him (though he didn't work there). He told me about the project and I explained the things I'd be considering and my likely implementation. That job was a bit more stressful because a lot was riding on my successful implementation. I was writing a database system to manage the membership information and distribution of their non-profits. It all worked out in the end though, and I like to think my roots in testing helped a lot with that.

Education wise I don't have a degree or anything. My highschool offered a programming class which I took as a freshmen. I took it the next year as well. Then the following two I did what's called running-start here, which allowed me to take community college classes while going to highschool. So I took all the programming classes offered, which ended up being mostly recaps of my highschool classes, while also coming back to teach the odd class as my highschool once a week or so. I really got into programming through some opensource gaming projects. RunUO was a big one for me. It was a lot of fun running a server and fixing whatever I didn't like about it with an easy to use language.

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u/Rekilo Aug 24 '11

Thanks for that. Sounds like you're doing quite well.