[tester756]

I'm shocked too.

Comapre it with people who applied too, but didn't have that "internal" knowledge

Is it fair from that "not well networked" person perspective?

It's not even like he found this question randomly on the internet, he got it from MSFT employee, lol.

I have really mixed feelings about this

Edit.

Don't get me wrong, apparently author was(and is) capable of doing his job, so it isn't a big problem, but what if author wasn't capable of doing the job and passed just due to the advantage?

I know person who told beginner programmer what X company asks on interviews and that guy actually managed to pass that interview due to the knowledge

but was fired like 3 months later due to lack of skills

[LosWochosWeek]

> but what if author wasn't capable of doing the job

Than Microsoft would've been scammed out of $350 worth of plane tickets, $150 worth of hotel commodations and $1000 worth of employee time. Hardly the end of the world for a multi billion dollar company

> and passed just due to the advantage?

Passed a six hour Microsoft on-site grilling due to knowing the question for a 15 minute off-site interview question?

[AmericanChopper]

> Is it fair from that "not well networked" person perspective?

Fairness becomes a bit of a contrived concept once you start to factor in higher order effects. Then it just turns into fair if it advantages me, and unfair if it doesn’t.

I helped a friend get a job once because I knew who was going to interview him, and I knew he had a blog where he published all his thought-leader technical opinions.

Is that fair or unfair? Probably neither. It’s more of a random coincidence that my friend benefitted from this. But is it fair that I have learned more about my local industry by going to industry events and listening to people present things, and talking to people, etc? That probably is fair, and that’s how I learned the tip I gave to my friend.

Fairness isn’t really relevant to the problem here. If you believe that there is a problem at all, then the problem is that the screening process can be influenced by random coincidence.