Blokarting world champ scores job at Microsoft HQ
university-of-waikato
Wed Jun 29 2011 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)
Blokarting world champ scores job at Microsoft HQ
Wednesday, 29 June 2011, 4:35 pm
Press Release: University of Waikato
29 June 2011
Student heads to Microsoft Seattle
World lightweight blokart champion and Waikato University computer science student Gabe Young has landed a job at Microsoft headquarters in Seattle.
Young, who will complete his four-year Bachelor of Computer Science degree at the end of the year, was offered a position as a software development engineer after five hours of interviews held at a Sydney hotel. “It was gruelling. I had the five one hour interviews back to back. Different people gave me different problems to solve. When they finished I only had to wait about ten minutes before they offered me a job. They expect you to decline or accept on the spot.”
He says a summer internship at Google was good preparation for the Microsoft interviews. “The interview for that was only an hour, but I had to solve a computing problem working on a white board – they wanted to see how I think.”
He did the Google internship with another Waikato student, Mark Hansen who has since been offered a position at Google once he graduates.
“We got paired up with a senior developer and were given full control of a small project,” says Young. “That was a really good experience. And Google gave us breakfast lunch and dinner five days a week. We only had to find our accommodation – we stayed at various backpackers.”
When Gabe Young starts work at Microsoft he’ll be writing testing software. “Later I expect I’ll specialise, working as a part of team, perhaps on maps or hotmail.”
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He’s pleased the next world blokarting champs are being held in Las Vegas. “I’ll only have to travel inter-state this year which makes a change.” Last year he travelled to Belgium where he defended his world title in the lightweight performance division.
Young is from Papamoa and attended Te Puke High School. He says he didn’t know what to expect when he began studying computer science but he found he really liked it and now it’s opening some interesting doors. He was awarded a Waikato University Sir Edmund Hillary Scholarship to study at Waikato, which covered his fees, and he paid his rent by taking a senior residential assistant position in one of the University halls of residence.
This week (SUBS: 1 July) he travels to Wellington where he’ll receive a Distinguished Performance Award at the New Zealand University Blues presentations in Wellington. Other Waikato University recipients are netballer Laura Langman, rowers Graham Oberlin-Brown and Tobias Wehr-Candler and badminton’s Oliver Leydon Davis. Students who studied at Waikato University last year who’ll receive NZ Blues awards are Nathan Cohen and Juliette Haigh, Emma Twigg and Duncan Grant all rowers, and rugby’s Stephen Donald.
ENDS
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