I'm from Brazil, almost getting my CS degree. Microsoft has offered me a job as a Software Development Engineer.
Because of visa bureacracies, my start date is 1 year from now.
So, HN, what kind of skills should I brush up?
It's a very legitimate question since most of the H1-B applicants go through a similar waiting period in between the job offer and start working. However, in my humble opinion this question would have had a longer lifetime and better answers if you had posted in Quora.<p>I am in a similar situation with a joining date in next October. I decided to finish reading the books I never had time for reading, work on a few community projects and spend more time with my family. I hope it won't get too boring.
Congrats !<p>Do you know the job description ? On what subject will you work ?
I would suggest to be fluent in C#, C++ and the .NET framwork.
Btw: How did MS make you an offer ? You applied or they came for you ?
Depends on what you're going to do... General stuff like 'Writing secure code' and 'introduction to algorithms' are useful to read.