Interview Experiences

Real candidates, real loops: every round, what was asked, and how it ended.

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51 stories

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MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Microsoft Software Engineer Interview: Two SDE2 online assessment problems

I started with an online assessment for a Software Development Engineer 2 role. It had two DSA questions, one medium and one harder. I got full marks on every test case for the medium problem. I came close on the hard one, but it was not perfect. After the OA, I waited and tried to work out whether I might get a callback. I had no further detail from the process; the assessment result was the onl…

Online Assessment0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Microsoft Software Engineer interview: passed OA then decline

My process started with an OA for a role that had the same title but a different job code. I fully passed both OA questions, but there were still more rounds afterward. The first interview was 45 minutes, followed by a loop with three separate 45-minute rounds on different days. Even though I felt prepared and thought I had done well, the process ended without an offer. I waited for several month…

RejectedOnline Assessment0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Microsoft Software Engineer interview experience

I took a LeetCode-style test with three problems, then went through three interviews with different managers. Each manager interview ran for about an hour and combined a coding problem with behavioral questions. The format made it clear they were weighing both problem solving and how I described my thinking and experience. The test came first, and each manager conversation added a human layer tha…

Online Assessment0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Reported Jun 2026

Microsoft Software Engineer Interview Experience: LRU cache and C++ vector implementation

My take home coding work and later interviews were more system oriented than quick algorithm exercises. I worked on two DSA problems: an LRU cache with a higher level design angle, and a vector related implementation using arrays, pointer arithmetic, and heap allocation in C++. The interviewers were friendly and fun to talk with, which made it easier to think out loud during implementation. The s…

Take-home Project0
MicrosoftProduct Manager
Reported Jun 2026

Microsoft Product Manager recruiter screen, hiring manager, and big-data silence

After I applied, I was contacted for an initial screen. The recruiter part felt a little unstructured but not off-putting, more conversational than scripted. I was told that multiple candidates were being interviewed for the role, which made the process feel uphill from the start. I reached a hiring-manager round and focused mostly on big-data topics. Additional rounds were supposed to follow, bu…

No response0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
May 2026

Phone Screen, Three Onsites, and a Template Rejection

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
MicrosoftMachine Learning Engineer
Apr 2026

Four Rounds on the Bing Team, No Offer

I applied to several MAI positions on the site, and then a Bing team doing image search got back to me and said they wanted to schedule an interview. First, let me complain about the HR — from the email address, it's clearly outsourced, and they never reply. For example, I asked what kind of interview this was, what it would cover, how many rounds — no idea at all. They'd only show up two or thre…

RejectedOnsite0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Apr 2026

Four Rounds, Best Vibe I Had All Year

Four rounds, overall a really relaxed vibe. Posting my Microsoft interview experience to give back to the forum. Bottom line up front: this was the most comfortable-feeling interview I had all year. The interviewers were pretty much all friendly, nobody tried to trip me up on purpose, and when I got stuck they'd proactively throw me a rope. The questions were medium difficulty, but they cared a l…

Onsite0
MicrosoftMachine Learning Engineer
Apr 2026

Technical Screen Ended Early After a Broken HackerRank Link

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
MicrosoftMachine Learning Engineer
Mar 2026

A Cold 45-Minute Screen for the Excel Copilot Team, Then a Same-Day Rejection

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
Microsoft
Mar 2026

DNA Reassembly, Then an Euler Path Follow-up

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RejectedTechnical ScreenXP0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

A Three-Round Phone Screen (Largest Island, Count Clouds, Find the Influencer), Then ChatGPT System Design

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Technical ScreenXP0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Mar 2026

Online Assessment with a Balanced-Window and Monotonic-Stack Problem

Q1 — problem You're given a permutation p of length n. For each k (1 ≤ k ≤ n), determine whether there's a contiguous subarray that is exactly a permutation of the numbers 1 through k (order doesn't matter). If one exists, call k "balanced." The final output is a length-n binary string, where the k-th digit says whether k is balanced. Q1 — approach The key isn't to enumerate subarrays — it's to f…

Online Assessment0
MicrosoftData Scientist
Feb 2026

Three Back-to-Back Interviews After the OA

The OA was an hour long with two questions, pretty simple. Three days after that I got an interview invite. Three interviews back to back, three hours total, all with very senior people interviewing. The first interviewer worked on software/systems and had me write a problem, roughly medium difficulty. Org chart → Tree. Top-down, level by level → BFS. "Show the entire layer first" → Queue. The se…

OfferOnsite0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Full-Day HE With a Matrix-Move Puzzle and Two Design Rounds

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OnsiteXP0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

A Four-Round Onsite That Felt Like a Formality

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OnsiteXP0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Four Onsite Rounds, Failed on an Unfamiliar Coding Problem

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Feb 2026

Onsite, Then the HM Round No-Showed

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No responseOnsiteXP0
MicrosoftData ScientistIntern
Feb 2026

Three Back-to-Back Rounds After the OA

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OfferOnsiteXP0
MicrosoftApplied ScientistIntern
Feb 2026

Three Back-to-Back Virtual Onsites in One Day

Position: Applied Science: PhD Internship Opportunities - Redmond HR emailed to invite me to interview, no OA. VO1 (02/04): a 30 minute simple chat, talked about past projects, asked about some details. Then scheduled three back-to-back VOs on the same day (02/19), each 45 minutes, with a 15 minute break between adjacent interviews. VO2: an applied scientist, also asked about technical details of…

OfferOnsite0

What are interview experiences?

An interview experience is a candidate's own account of a hiring loop — not a question bank entry. It tells you the shape of the process: how many rounds there were, what each round actually tested, how long the gaps between them ran, and what the recruiter said at the end. That context is the part a question list cannot give you.

How to read them

Weight recent write-ups more heavily — interview loops change, often within a year. Read several for the same company and role rather than one: a single account tells you what one interviewer asked, while five tell you what the bar is. Note the outcome badge too, since a rejection write-up usually explains the gap far more precisely than an offer one.

Share your own

Every published experience earns 50 XP, and each of the first 3 likes it receives in a day earns you 10 XP more. Likes must come from established accounts; like-for-like swaps and likes from your own second account are not paid. Write it while the details are fresh — the round order, the exact prompts, and how much time you were given are what the next reader needs.

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