Microsoft | SDE2 | Bangalore | 31 May 2024 [Reject]

I am sharing my interview experience for an SDE 2 position at Microsoft on May 31. I have four years of experience in the field.

Timeline: May 22: Received a referral. May 25: Invited to complete an online assessment (OA) on Codility by May 27. May 26: Completed the OA (two questions in 80 minutes). Question 1: Find the largest possible subset of an array A where the AND of all elements is greater than 0 (Medium difficulty). Question 2: Update no more than two lines in existing code to make it calculate the total sum of node values correctly.

Codility Experience: did not provide feedback on how many test cases passed, unlike other platforms. This lack of information necessitates thorough testing.

May 28: I was shortlisted for a May 31 interview. May 30: Received an email with the interview schedule (two one-hour interviews, with the possibility of a third).

Interview Rounds (May 31):

Round 1: Discussed current work and challenges (30 minutes). DSA question: Search in a Rotated Sorted Array. I explained my modified binary search approach, implemented it on Codility (passing 5 out of 6 test cases), and answered questions about assignment operators, copy constructors, and virtual functions.

Round 2: Discussed work experience (15 minutes). Design questions: Q1: Redesign the flight booking experience for MakeMyTrip using generative AI. Q2: Implement a rate limiter to ensure users cannot tweet more than 100 times in 5 minutes on a specific Twitter feature.

Round 3: Easy DSA question: Find the Least Common Multiple (LCM) of two numbers. I wrote and implemented the code on with test cases. We discussed corner cases, test case selection strategies, and Time Limit Exceeded (TLE) and integer overflow considerations. Design question: Similar to URL shortening.

Follow-up: June 3: I contacted the recruiter for feedback. I was told to expect an update by the end of the week. June 4: Received a rejection email.

Overall: The interview process was smooth and well-organized. I am committed to learning from this experience and refining my skills.