? Kai-fu Lee: What strange questions will Microsoft ask in the interview (Figure)

I have always believed that smart people are willing to work with smart people. Because smart people are like a gravitational field, IQ itself is equivalent to gravity. Smart people will become smarter when they are together, and the more smart people they attract, the greater the gravitational field will become.

Although the initial recruitment effect in the United States was not good, I did not give up. I believe that with the return of Ya Qin, there will be more smart people willing to return to China.

After many times of communication, my brother Shen Xiangyang at Carnegie Mellon University finally agreed to come back. He is a researcher at Microsoft headquarters. In addition, we also found Zhang Hongjiang, the chief researcher of HP Lab, who can be said to be the "originator" of multimedia retrieval.

In China, we continue to dig deep for talents and look around for the possibility of joining famous professors. Wang Jian, a professor at Zhejiang University, was worried about how to refuse Zhejiang University to promote him as the "Dean of the Faculty of Science". He readily accepted our invitation and took this opportunity to leave school. Huang Changning is a professor in Tsinghua University and the most famous scholar in the field of natural language in China. 1April, 999, he became one of us.

In addition, I will not give up any opportunity to look through the alumni records of famous universities around the world and check the email "group" of international students. In Tsinghua, Peking University and HKUST, I asked around: "Who is your most outstanding alumnus? Who was the best programmer in those days? Who is the best writer in the world after studying abroad? 」

Tsinghua's friend told me that there was a "leader Deng" named Li Jin, who was the boy next to him when * * * said that "computers should be taken from dolls". Later, I went to America and worked in Sharp Laboratory. My friend in China University of Science and Technology told me that their best achievement was Li Shipeng, who won three Guo Moruo scholarships, and now he is in Sannafo Laboratory. I'm determined to pull them all over. Coincidentally, they all respect Zhang Yaqin the most. When they heard that Ya Qin had joined Microsoft China Research Institute, they did not hesitate to join.

From the end of 1998 to the end of 1999, Shen Xiangyang, Zhang Hongjiang, Huang Changning, Wang Jian, Li Shipeng, Li Jin and Zhu Wenwu successively joined Microsoft China Research Institute, injecting fresh blood into the Institute and forming the first management team of the Institute.

I and the staff of the Institute, front row: Zhang Hongjiang, Kai-fu Lee, Shen Xiangyang, Zhang Yaqin; The second row: Li Jin and Liu.

1February, 999, the institute moved from the sixth floor to the fifth floor, and the office lacked everything except the smarter "China brain".

I believe that Microsoft's signboard will never stop outstanding people, because I believe that with my habit of working in Silicon Valley for many years, Microsoft China Research Institute will bring you a relaxed environment, an open platform and generous treatment.

However, a rather thorny issue is that the level of computer doctors in China is far from that in the United States at that time. If we only evaluate the quality of their scientific research achievements or doctoral thesis, then they may not meet the requirements.

How to solve this problem? We must have a new "hematopoietic" mechanism-since doctors in China are smart enough, but their doctorate level is not enough, then we will hire doctors and retrain them to do a doctoral thesis.

This is my "associate researcher" or "postdoctoral" program. Previously, Microsoft Research Institute had never had an associate researcher. The time limit we set for these "associate researchers" is two years. Within two years, if their performance can be close to international standards, they will be promoted to "official" researchers. If they don't meet the standards, we will inform them of their decision not to become full-time researchers and advise them to start looking for other jobs. Such a "separate research" system not only meets the company's requirements and systems, but also allows us to reserve a group of fresh troops.

Since it is a two-year contract, we should give them competitive treatment. Speaking of treatment, to my surprise, many people who joined the Redmond Institute in the early days have become "rich".

Once, I visited a colleague's house in the Institute. His home is really luxurious. His words also reveal the superiority of life from time to time. "My daughter always complains about me and goes to Hawaii for a holiday every year! Why not go somewhere else? At lunch, he opened the back door and let me on board. We sailed to the top Italian restaurant across the lake for dinner. After dinner, he sailed to the middle of the lake and took out good red wine and cigars for the guests to enjoy.

A researcher earns so much! I was secretly surprised. Later, I calculated that if I 199 1 went to graduate school, an ordinary researcher could easily become a multi-millionaire with Microsoft shares.

Of course, it is impossible to give employees a lot of stocks from 65438 to 0998, but I hope I can give employees of the research institute more stocks than other foreign companies, so that they can do research with peace of mind.

In addition, Microsoft China Research Institute also promised that all employed researchers can solve the Beijing hukou, which is a very important factor to attract talents. 1998, if you don't have a Beijing hukou, it will be more troublesome to buy a house, a car and have children. Therefore, in the first year, the Institute applied for about 20 Beijing hukou for employees.

After settling down in Sigma Building, the front desk received a steady stream of application letters and resumes. Our small team began to study how to conduct written tests and interviews, and never let go of an excellent talent.

Because there are too many job seekers, we decided to organize their written examination first. As an unimportant reference index, as long as it is not lower than the minimum requirement line, you will have the opportunity to interview. As a result, 90% of the applicants did not meet the minimum requirements of written examination. This surprised me.

The interview is the most critical. Because the examiner is limited, at first we can only interview 8 people every day, and these 8 people have to pass 8 rounds of tests. Interviews are usually one-on-one Through questions and answers, eight examiners pay attention to four questions: Are they smart enough? Is there an innovative spirit? Is there a team spirit? What is the professional basis?

Some people say that a candidate who enters Microsoft Research Institute is like climbing a dangerous peak. The harder it is to get to the back, the more tired it is to get closer to success. Although our questions are sometimes "strange", the essence is not to hear the correct answers, but to hear their thinking methods from the way they answer questions.

Our questions include:

Why is the cover of the sewer round? How many gas stations are there in Beijing? What should you do if you disagree with your tutor? Give you a difficult problem, how will you solve it? Two irregular ropes. The burning time of each rope is 1 hour. Please burn two ropes in 45 minutes.

Sometimes, we even have to examine a person's "character" and test his "emotional intelligence" from his answers.

For example, there is a candidate whose indicators are all good, but my vote is-absolutely not hired. It turned out that he told me mysteriously and calmly, "I worked on a project in my previous company." If I can come to work at Microsoft, I can continue with this project! " I was optimistic about him, but obviously, I can't trust such a person because he may run away with the company's "achievements" at any time! Seeing that my expression was slightly dignified, he immediately said to me: "Don't worry, this achievement was actually achieved in my spare time after work! However, it is obviously too late to make up for it now.

Another candidate also exposed his own shortcomings when answering questions. When I asked him "Doctor", what would you do if your opinion conflicted with that of your tutor? He immediately began to denounce how the tutor oppressed the students and how he was wronged, and began to complain that the school environment was not open enough and did not provide the doctoral students with the scientific research environment they deserved. Such a candidate obviously has a "negative" mentality and mood. With this mentality, no matter what kind of environment he is given, he will jump out to criticize and complain. Such people, even if their "hardware" is excellent, we can only stay away from them.

With the development of recruitment, we broke the rule of interviewing 8 people every day, because we found that the long inspection time was actually a waste. After research, we changed to interview 20 people every day. After two rounds, if we don't think it is good enough, we will let the candidates quit directly.

A few weeks later, resumes from major universities poured in. Chen Honggang, who is related to colleges and universities, flies around the country with examination papers, insisting that every candidate has a chance to participate in this fair competition. The most difficult thing is that even if there is only one candidate in a city, he will fight for it himself.

Zhangqian, a girl from Wuhan, later recalled the original written test scene. "It was a bit strange at first. I am the only candidate in the whole room, and only one person comes to test me? Are you a liar? Are you a pervert? Later, I found out that after Chen Honggang gave her the newspaper, she went shopping by herself. There seemed to be no problem, so she answered the paper quietly. Later, zhangqian successfully entered Microsoft Research Institute through various interviews.

Note: This article is an excerpt from my new book The World is Different for You. I will extract some short stories to share with you in the future.