Interview Experiences

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

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72 stories

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MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

GPU Clustering Phone Screen, Rejected After Four-Round Onsite

Locked — open it to unlock the full story with XP.

RejectedOnsiteXP0
MicrosoftSoftware EngineerSenior+
Jan 2026

Azure Storage L64 Loop, Failed on Storage Internals Depth

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RejectedOnsiteXP0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Jan 2026

Sharding Embeddings and Language-Model Outputs

The author describes a Microsoft AI infrastructure virtual-onsite discussion centered on distributing large embedding tables and language-model output layers across GPUs. The interview compared splitting by vocabulary entries with splitting by hidden dimensions, asking how each choice affects memory use, communication, and connections to later computation. Follow-ups examined routing token lookup…

Onsite0
MicrosoftData ScientistIntern
Jan 2026

OA, Then Three Back-to-Back Rounds, Offer a Month Later

Timeline 10/13: HackerRank OA — one LeetCode problem and one data-processing problem 11/03: 3 rounds, back-to-back interviews 12/03: offer Background: Statistics PhD, resume roughly 80% LLM-related research, no conference publications at the time of the interview (a few projects were finished and submitted), no industry experience. Round 1: the interviewer was a senior guy. 30 minutes of behavior…

OfferOnsite0
MicrosoftData Scientist
Jan 2026

OA Plus Three Back-to-Back Senior Interviews in One Day

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OfferOnsiteXP0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Reported Jan 2026

Straight to Onsite After the OA, Offer Through Pattern Practice

I just finished the Microsoft interview loop and ended up with an offer, so I'm writing down what worked best for me. I'm a software engineer, mostly backend work and distributed services, though never at a big tech company. The process looked a lot like what other companies do, with one difference: there was no recruiter screen. After the online assessment I was sent straight to the onsite. That…

OfferOnsite0
MicrosoftApplied ScientistSenior+
Jan 2026

Seven Team Loops and a Comp Fight

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In progressOnsiteXP0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Reported Dec 2025

HackerRank OA, Then a Grilling AA Round and a Data Center Design

The process started with a HackerRank online assessment containing 2 questions. Both were on the harder side, but I got through them, and a couple of days later I heard I was moving on to the later rounds. Coding: I practiced the most frequently asked Microsoft coding questions, and most of what came up was either straight from that list or a close variation. System Design: I worked through the s…

OfferOnsite0
MicrosoftSoftware EngineerSenior+
Dec 2025

A Level 64 Offer That Still Fell Short

I've always just been a lurker here, never able to see anything useful. Since I'm interviewing right now, I figured I'd post this — hopefully it helps others too. Background: I work at Amazon (aka "the banana factory"), YOE 6+. WA. Let me give the result up front: I applied as senior and got a level 64 offer. After two rounds of negotiation, total comp went from 26 to 30 (215 base + 54/2 sign-on…

OfferOnsite0
MicrosoftData ScientistNew Grad
Nov 2025

Three Back-to-Back Rounds, Offer a Month Later

Timeline 10/13: HackerRank OA — one LeetCode problem, one data-processing problem 11/03: 3 rounds, back-to-back interviews 12/03: Offer Background: Statistics PhD, resume was 80% large-language-model-related research, no conference publications at the time of interviewing (a few projects were finished and being submitted), no industry experience. Round 1: the interviewer gave me 30 min of behavio…

OfferOnsite0
MicrosoftData Scientist
Oct 2025

Four Weeks of Email Chaos, Then the Position Was Filled

Sharing a bizarre experience today: the Microsoft interviewer couldn't receive Gmail emails. I got notified four weeks ago for a coding screen round. I needed to provide 5 interview windows, so I replied, and then... nothing. I waited three days, followed up, and the interviewer said she never received my last email — checked her spam folder too, nothing there. But this one she got. So I gave new…

RejectedOther0
MicrosoftSoftware Engineer
Aug 2025

Online Assessment, Knapsack DP Timeout Turned Binary Search

I think I probably failed. Two problems in 90 minutes, and right after layoffs they're still running a hiring event, which is honestly a dark joke. The role is general level 62. My first problem was labeled medium difficulty, and the second was said to be harder. But I used knapsack DP for the first problem and it timed out... I ended up rewriting it as binary search right at the wire. They claim…

Online Assessment0

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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