I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) in Oct 2013
Interview
Everything about Microsoft's interview process is great!
Start - Apply on website / on-campus / through recruiter
First - Phone screen / on campus interview (EASY)
Second - Fly out to Seattle for full day interviews (MEDIUM)
End - You usually get a few weeks to reply to the offer, I got a month
They usually don't tell you what team you'll be interviewing for, but it doesn't matter. They don't ask you anything specific about the team anyway.
Almost everything in the Seattle trip is covered including room service, rental car, meals, etc. They really treat their candidates well. The interviews take a few hours (4 rounds of 45-50minute interviews on a whiteboard at their office) and range from medium to hard difficulty. They don't tell you too much about the company/offer/process from the get-go but are very friendly and respond to any questions you have quickly.
I would highly recommend going through this process especially if you have a negative impression of Microsoft. The 'evil' rumors just simply aren't true - and the company is great. Their compensation package is top-notch and would easily match Google/Facebook/etc. The disposable income you get is probably more than you'd get anywhere else given that Washington has 0% state income tax, and the living expenses in Seattle are reasonable.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write a function that takes an integer array and removes duplicates from it (EASY)
Follow up: Now optimize it, trying to minimize CPI (HARD) [note: you need knowledge of branch prediction, loop unrolling and other computer architecture concepts for this part]
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.
