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Microsoft interview experience Real time questions & tips from candidates to crack your interview

SDE - 1

Microsoft
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4 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Preparation
Duration: 3 months
Topics: Dynamic Programming, OOPS, Computer Networks, Computer System Architecture, Operating System, Data Structures, Pointers
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Make sure that you are thorough with CS concepts beforehand.
Tip 2 : Even when you are explaining the approach to a question, try to parallelly think about how you would code it.
Tip 3 : Read the previous interview experiences. It would give a fair idea of the kind of questions one should expect.
Tip 4 : For position like Microsoft SDE-1, practicing medium difficulty level coding questions would be the way to go.
Tip 5 : Practice atleast 200 questions from coding platforms like CodeZen, LeetCode, Interviewbit as they contain common interview questions.

Application process
Where: Company Website
Eligibility: 4+ Years of Experience
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Mention Projects and past work experience as it sets good impression.
Tip 2 : Keep your resume up to date for the role you are applying.
Tip 3 : Try to keep your resume of 1 Page.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Interview
Duration90 minutes
Interview date9 Nov 2020
Coding problem2

This round was conducted in Hackerrank portal for a total duration of 95 minutes and was divided into 4 sections.

1st Section : Aptitude Section : 14 questions , 28 minutes
2nd Section : Technical Section : 12 questions , 17 minutes
3rd Section :1 coding Questions : 20 minutes+30 minutes

1. Water

Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
AmazonAdobeMicrosoft

You are given an array 'ARR' of positive integers, each of which represents the number of liters of water in that particular bucket, we have to make the liters of water in every bucket equal.

We are allowed to do two types of operations any number of times:

1. We can altogether remove a bucket from the sequence

2. We can draw some water from a bucket

We have to tell the minimum number of liters removed to make all buckets have the same amount of water.

For example:

Given ‘N’ = 4 and ‘ARR’ = [1, 1, 2, 2].
The answer will be 2, i.e., if we chose that all buckets should have 1 unit of water, we will have to throw 1 unit of water from buckets 3 and 4. Hence 2.
Try solving now

2. Rat In A Maze

Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
AdobeOYOCIS - Cyber Infrastructure

You are given a starting position for a rat which is stuck in a maze at an initial point (0, 0) (the maze can be thought of as a 2-dimensional plane). The maze would be given in the form of a square matrix of order 'N' * 'N' where the cells with value 0 represent the maze’s blocked locations while value 1 is the open/available path that the rat can take to reach its destination. The rat's destination is at ('N' - 1, 'N' - 1). Your task is to find all the possible paths that the rat can take to reach from source to destination in the maze. The possible directions that it can take to move in the maze are 'U'(up) i.e. (x, y - 1) , 'D'(down) i.e. (x, y + 1) , 'L' (left) i.e. (x - 1, y), 'R' (right) i.e. (x + 1, y).

Note:
Here, sorted paths mean that the expected output should be in alphabetical order.
For Example:
Given a square matrix of size 4*4 (i.e. here 'N' = 4):
1 0 0 0
1 1 0 0
1 1 0 0
0 1 1 1 
Expected Output:
DDRDRR DRDDRR 
i.e. Path-1: DDRDRR and Path-2: DRDDRR

The rat can reach the destination at (3, 3) from (0, 0) by two paths, i.e. DRDDRR and DDRDRR when printed in sorted order, we get DDRDRR DRDDRR.
Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Face to Face
Duration120 Minutes
Interview date11 Nov 2020
Coding problem2

This was an Online F2F Technical Round conducted on CodePair : Hackerrank. So, Basically You have to Run and Submit ( Pass All Test cases) in the Interview Round also (Like normal Coding Test) in Codepair : Hackerrank & along with that You should have to explain your Code and Approach to the Interviewers.
The Interviewers were helpful and didn't hesitate in giving hints.
Timing - 10:00 A.M to 12:00 P.M

1. Minimum Fountains

Easy
10m average time
80% success
0/40
Asked in companies
Samsung R&D InstituteOYOUber

There is a one-dimensional garden of length 'N'. On each of the positions from 0 to 'N', there is a fountain, and this fountain’s water can reach up to a certain range as explained further. In other words, there are 'N' + 1 fountains located at positions 0, 1, 2, 3, …. 'N' which can be activated in the garden.

You are given an integer 'N' and an array/list 'ARR' of length 'N' + 1, where each index of the array denotes the coverage limit of a particular fountain.

A fountain at index 'i' can water the area ranging from the position 'i' - 'ARR'['i'] to 'i' + 'ARR'['i'].

Your task is to find the minimum number of fountains that have to be activated such that the whole garden from position 0 to 'N' has access to the water from at least some fountain.

Note:

1. 0-based indexing is used in the array.
2. We only care about the garden from 0 to 'N' only. So if i - 'ARR'['i'] < 0 or i + 'ARR'['i'] > 'N', you may ignore the exceeding area.
3. If some fountain covers the garden from position 'A' to position 'B', it means that the water from this fountain will spread to the whole line segment with endpoints 'A' and 'B'.
Try solving now

2. Minimize Cash Flow

Easy
15m average time
85% success
0/40
Asked in companies
AmazonAdobeMicrosoft

You are given a list of ‘transactions’ between ‘n’ number of friends. who have to give each other money. The list consists of data of receiver, sender, and transaction.

Your task is to minimize the cash flow and the total number of transactions should also be minimum.

For example :

subsequence

In figure 1 : friend-1 has to pay 2000$ to friend-2, and 4000$ to friend-3 and friend-2 has to pay 3000$ to friend-3.

In figure 2 : so we can minimize the flow between friend-1 to friend-2 by direct pay to friend-1 to friend-3
Try solving now
03
Round
Hard
Face to Face
Duration120 Minutes
Interview date14 Nov 2020
Coding problem1

A lot of Variants based on Constraints were asked in this Round. They will ask you to write the final code for every question before Submitting it(run all test cases) so you won’t get any hints after running test cases in the IDE. ( So don’t Submit your code before dry running it on a lot of Test Cases on pen & paper , they allow to use pen & blank paper at the time of Interviews) .The Interviewers tried to trick in case of time complexities even if you gave the best one. So try to be confident.

1. Buy and Sell Stock

Hard
0/120
Asked in companies
ZomatoInfo Edge India (Naukri.com)Expedia Group

You are Harshad Mehta’s friend. He told you the price of a particular stock for the next ‘n’ days.


You are given an array ‘prices’ which such that ‘prices[i]’ denotes the price of the stock on the ith day.


You don't want to do more than 2 transactions. Find the maximum profit that you can earn from these transactions.


Note

1. Buying a stock and then selling it is called one transaction.

2. You are not allowed to do multiple transactions at the same time. This means you have to sell the stock before buying it again. 
Example:
Input: ‘n’ = 7, ‘prices’ = [3, 3, 5, 0, 3, 1, 4].

Output: 6

Explanation: 
The maximum profit can be earned by:
Transaction 1: Buying the stock on day 4 (price 0) and then selling it on day 5 (price 3). 
Transaction 2: Buying the stock on day 6 (price 1) and then selling it on day 6 (price 4).
Total profit earned will be (3 - 0) + ( 4 - 1) = 6. 
Try solving now
04
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration30 minutes
Interview date15 Nov 2020
Coding problem1

This was HR Round. The HR was friendly and asked basic questions.
The timing was 2:00 PM to 2:30 PM.

1. Basic HR Questions

If you won a Rs.10-crore lottery, would you still work? 

Give me an example of your creativity.

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Prepare Subjects in Depth for Technical Coding & Interview Round. Cracking the DE Shaw interview is not possible just by reading the short articles one night before.They ask the questions in-depth.
Tip 2 : All the Questions were basic in the HR Round !! … Be Honest in HR Round as well as Technical Rounds.
Tip 3 : Be Confident in HR Round and don't hesitate while answering and explaining situation based questions.

Here's your problem of the day

Solving this problem will increase your chance to get selected in this company

Skill covered: Programming

Suppose list1 is [2, 133, 12, 12], what is max(list1) in Python?

Choose another skill to practice
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