I applied through university. The process took 5 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) in Dec 2009
Interview
I had a ridiculous experience. The first time my interview was scheduled the interviewer never called. I panicked and tried to get back to my recruiter but it turned out she was out of office (no auto-responses through her email). I sent multiple emails but received no response. Finally I decided to call. I didn't have her phone number as she never disclosed it. I was able to speak with her by using their automated system and mentioning her name. Another interview was scheduled.
This interviewer was strongly biased towards SDE/T positions. He asked me why I applied for an SDE position and not SDE/T. I gave my explanation and was told the same could apply to SDET therefore I should really consider SDE/T. I said ok, but I like SDE (matter of personal choice really). After a lot of chatting about stuff like this we finally arrived at the technical questions. I was asked to return the longest palindrome in a given string. I was barely given 5 minutes (because most of the time was spent in explaining why SDET is kind of better as SDETs focus on code quality rather than just shipping a product). Further few minutes were given to test the code that I wrote.
Btw, did I mention that I was supposed to write code in live meeting where there is no way you can edit the text you've typed? No indentation, nothing? (I couldn't figure it out, neither could my interviewer) After this, it took them over a month to reject me. The interviewer said 1-2 weeks.
I was expecting so much from this. I wish it would have been different.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Write a function that returns the longest palindrome in a string. Not just the first one or any palindrome, but the longest. The String is a long sequence of characters, spaces included.
It started with a 90-minute online assessment, followed by a technical phone screen with one engineer. The OA covered two medium-to-hard algorithm problems. For coding practice, I mainly rely on "LeetCode" to cover different topics. For company-specific interview preparation, I use "Hack2Hire", "LeetCode Discuss", and "1Point3Acres" to find any recent original questions. All of them are helpful platforms. The phone screen included one coding problem and some discussion around edge cases and time complexity.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given a list of meeting time intervals, determine if a person could attend all meetings.
I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Microsoft in Dec 2024
Interview
I was invited to a technical interview with Microsoft. The interviewer started with a general question: “What happens when you type google.com into your browser?” They asked a few follow-up questions related to that.
After that, they gave me a LeetCode algorithmic question, which was at a hard level. The problem was “Integer to English Words.”
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. What happens when you type google.com into your browser?
2. “Integer to English Words” – LeetCode algorithmic question
Three tech interviews + one hiring manager VO, most of questions are medium to hard leetcode questions. Ask some questions about techniques you written on the resume. But I think they care more about the match of the research and the job.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about the recommendation System you made for the work.
