Software Developer applicants have rated the interview process at Microsoft with 4 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 50% positive. To compare, the company-average is 68.2% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
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I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Herzliya)
Interview
I had two technical interviews. The first was pretty standard: I was asked to describe in detail any previous projects I was part of and then asked a technical question. The interviewer was very nice and polite.
The second interview took place about 3 weeks after the first one (I don't know why). The interviewer was extremely rude: he put his feet up and played with his phone throughout the interview. After talking about my previous experience we proceeded to the technical part. After asking the question, he wrote down his mobile number and said "text me when you're done". It seemed he was much keener to get back to his usual business than to actually do the interview. Because of this the interview took 3 hours (instead of 2) which was really annoying.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
First part: Given a sorted array that was "shifted", e.g., [1, 2, 3, 4] ---> [2, 3, 4, 1], write an algorithm that finds the maximum value in the array. Second part: Improve the time complexity using parallel computing.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Oct 2016
Interview
Recruiter contacted me via LinkedIn, filled out application, then recruiter scheduled me for online technical screen. Had a brief phone screen then went to onsite a couple weeks later.
Questions were not particularly difficult, maybe ranging from LeetCode easy to medium. They asked several follow-ups to questions related to SW Engineering just to see you hadn't just memorized the base solution. I had a very positive experience, the interviewers were nice and easy to interact with. I didn't have any major scheduling snafus vs my Amazon interview, which was just kind of a mess.
I interviewed with a total of four people. They were all software engineers.
Got a quick turnaround (interviewed on Friday, told me I was going to get an offer on Monday, 2-3 week process to get offer, background check).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
interesting real-life use case of a data structure, with a follow-up
I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Redmond, WA) in Dec 2016
Interview
First round phone interview with basic questions about my experience and a logic question. Second and final round interviews were on-site, 4 interviews an hour each with a short break in between. Simple coding problems just designed to see how you think, nothing to trip you up just take your time and think through it. Also asked some PM related questions from things on my resume