microsoft office 2010 blog meet-our-interns-part-1

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Anne Cheng – our US interns go to 216 distinct universities and are from 29 totally different nations. A great group of interns that are as diverse and varied as the internships they filled. Being a global company with a global customer base makes it even more important for us to have talent from all around the world to help us create our next generation versions/products. As promised,microsoft office 2010, I asked a few of our international interns about their experiences – what were their interviews like? How did it feel to relocate to a new country? What were some of the things they worked on during their time here? All questions that I receive frequently from candidates around the word interested in our internships. today's post - and the next 2 posts, I'll introduce you to some of our International interns and their thoughts on their experiences ... Hear from Eugeni from Brazil below, and check back later this week to hear from Ioana from Romania and Bulut from Turkey. from Brazil – Softwre Development Engineer intern within Core File Systems team

Q: Hi, Eugeni. Thanks for joining us today! To start, tell us a bit about yourself. was born in Moscow, Russia, and lived there until 1996. At that time, my parents changed to Brazil, and I came along. used to programming when I was around 8 years old, when my father bought his first computer (a 286-based laptop, with CGA screen and MS-DOS 3.3). At that time there were almost no possibilities to learn anything about computing in Russia, so I had to learn all by myself. I started with batch files programming, and soon learned Pascal. After that, I learned a couple of other languages, like Basic and C, and since that time I had no doubts about my future profession. computers, I also have a few hobbies. I like reading, listening to music, martial arts (mainly Tae Kwon Do and Muay Thai), and I also study music since I was 7 years old.

Q: What were your reasons for applying for an internship here? I guess that the main reason was the curiosity about how the computers really work internally. I always tried to learn everything about computers by myself, but with Microsoft-related products it is quite a challenge :). Since I started my under-graduation, I was mostly working with Unix and Linux related systems, but I was always curious to find out how Windows work. So probably the chance to understand how Windows really works, and - who knows - maybe even contribute something back were the main reasons.

Q: How were your interviews? Were they what you expected? Any tips for future candidates? interviews were really interesting - they actually were much more interesting then I was originally expecting. From what I was reading about Microsoft interviews, I was expecting several coding-related questions, but the interviews were much more interesting than that. Of course, there were code questions :), but the whole goal of the interviews - from my point of view - was to see how the candidates would solve unexpected problems. mean, the interviewers didn't want the candidates simple to say "ahh, I can use this algorithm with these parameters to solve this problem", but wanted to see how would they solve a completely unknown problem, or how would they behave themselves in front of a new situation. my free time, I often program something, just to see if I can solve a difficult computing problem. Thus, I was really enjoying the interviews, because I had the feeling that the interviewers had the same passion about computers, just like me. interviews were more interesting for me because I had very limited experience with Microsoft products and whole Windows-related programming styles and techniques. So I tried to solve the problems from a different point of view, and this has resulted in some interesting discussions.

Q: You relocated from Brazil. How was the relocation process for you? from S~ao Carlos, Brazil, a small city near the center of S~ao Paulo state. I did my under-graduation and master degree there, at UFSCar university, and after that I changed to USP university, also in S~ao Carlos, for my PhD. guess that the biggest challenge - at least for me - was the distance. When you are working at Microsoft you have plenty of free time, but it is obviously not enough to travel back home for a weekend, or at least once in a few months. So definitely this proves to be a problem - when you have to stay away from you family, and friends, for a long time. this distance, the relocation was great - everything was scheduled and prepared for me shortly, including the housing,win 7 professional generator key, rental car, and during my whole stay in the US I had no complains about the relocation. Good job guys :). did you work on in your internship and how were you able to apply your learning from school? my internship I worked on NTFS file system. It was really interesting for me because I managed to obtain just the kind of knowledge I wanted (I mean, how the things really work on a low level). NTFS is a huge (or better, really-really HUGE) file system, and it has a LOT of code. And it is also completely different from Linux file systems that I was aware of,buy win 7 x86, so it took me some time to learn how it work. few first weeks, however, I was able to understand most of it. Obviously, I couldn't get to that point without help of my mentor, Daniel Chan, and manager,buy windows 7 key, Neal Christiansen, who helped me greatly and were able to answer any tough question I had. my internship, I worked on NTFS performance evaluation and tuning. We managed to improve the performance of all directory-related operations greatly, and our changes are in Vista and Longhorn server branches right now. also had a chance to work with some additional Microsoft teams on a few other projects. It was a really interesting experience, and I don't think that every intern had the chance to work on so many things :). thing I learned from my internship is that the education you receive at college is fundamental for each and every job you'll have. Of course,office Professional 2007, each job requires distinctive techniques and knowledge, but unless you have a solid theory basis (like basic algorithms, data structures, and all sort of "boring" things you learn) you will have a really hard time. a clue for future interns - if you think that the concepts and techniques from the decades of 70 and 80, like sorting algorithms, data structures and so on, are useless and you are never going to need them on you job, you really should think again about it :). guess I just have to thank my teachers at UFSCar and USP universities, to give me the base to do all the great things. Even while at some points during my graduation I was really thinking that some computing, theory and math classes would be pointless, my stay at Microsoft have proven that I was wrong :). What were the top three things you enjoyed about your internship? - The possibility to work on real code, and contribute to a real-world operating system. The chance work with and learn from really brilliant programmers. - The coffee machines at Microsoft were really good :). there anything you would change about your experience? internship was a really great experience. I managed to learn a LOT, and it definitely was a unique experience. Eugeni! if you have other questions for Eugeni, be sure to leave them in the comments section. encourages some of you to apply! As you can see from my previous post on Microsoft internships, our internships are extremely fun as well! Let me know in the comments section if you have more questions about our internships. We have most of our interns here in the summer, but for some of our International candidates, we occasionally will have some off-season opportunities as well. For more information on our US based internships, including more profiles of previous interns, check out: check back later this week to hear from two more of our international interns!
Anne