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by biobot 5544 days ago
I think you left the interviewers some bad impressions about your technical skills.

Blame the interviewers throw easy questions at you and think that it's all they get is blatantly wrong. Most Microsoft's devs are better than that!

Based on my experience, the fact that you did not get harder questions show that they thought you did not sail through the easy ones as they expected. And believe me, knowing the answer is one thing, explaining it clearly is another thing.

When I interviewed in Redmond last year, I got 5 interviews total. The first one is easy with all similar questions you got. The second was harder as the guy asked me a problem that starts off easy but when you add more data to it, it becomes more like an open problem. The third one is a OOP design question. The fourth one I met an engineer that joined MS from 1992 and he asked me only one algorithmic question that I have never seen before (Believe me, I read all those 'interviews' books and I know many ). It was very strange tree structure that I did not remember. I spent about 20 minutes stared at it and I got the first part after 35 minutes and then he asked me to explain how I finish the problem. He seemed to be OK with my answer. The last interviewer is a manager. He did not ask me anymore technical question but focus mostly on my preferences, experiences, previous jobs and some behavioral questions.

I think the interviews are on par with other top companies like Google ( but Google focus much more on scale ), Facebook and Amazon ( focus more on design and scale ).

In conclusion, rest assure that your interviewers are much smarter than you think. Hope you do better next time!

1 comments

I'm absolutely positive that Microsoft Devs and Testers are top notch. That's why I wanted to work there and why I was sad about the result of the interview. It was not me that didn't get harder questions. The other 3 that were interviewing at the same time said exactly the same thing (they gave the same problems to everyone). In each interview, with the exception of the second one that I solved two coding problems, I was asked a lot of behavioral questions before like 10minutes of the end, where I have to code.
For every open position, they will bring in onsite about 10 people. And most of those 10 are pretty good too. So you had to make a very good impression with the interviewer to make the cut. And of course, a some luck won't hurt too.

Again, I reiterate my point : knowing the answer to a coding question is one thing, explaining it to others is the other thing. They won't hire anyone cannot explain such easy questions clearly. It needs some practice!