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

Software Engineer

Microsoft
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5 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
In the lockdown period, I started my journey to where I am today. When the first lockdown prevailed, I started to learn DSA, which was the best time to learn DSA because no pressure from college was there for its useless assignments. In the lockdown of around six months, I learned the basic algorithms, and at the end, I started practicing on leetcode and codechef-like platforms. They helped me a lot during my journey.
Application story
At the start of my fourth year of graduation, some friends had already been placed in various companies. It started to worry me that I was the one who had not even tried for an interview till then. Then, One day I saw an opening at Microsoft. So, I applied for it. After that, the selection processes were scheduled.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
I think I had the appropriate skills and a good amount of knowledge to prove that I was the right man for the post. I also solved coding questions in the optimal manner
Preparation
Duration: 1 month
Topics: Graphs, Dynamic Programming, Arrays, LinkedList, strings
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Practice as much as you can.
Tip 2 : Prepare for company, not in general.
Tip 3 : Your past work should be objective and your contribution should be very clear

Application process
Where: Other
Eligibility:
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Keep only relevant things for the job you are applying.
Tip 2 : Minimal data with measurable contribution and effect.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Easy
Face to Face
Duration50 minutes
Interview date1 Jul 2019
Coding problem1

This was a Data Structural round.

1. Distinct Islands

Moderate
25m average time
80% success
0/80
Asked in companies
IBMBarclaysMicrosoft

You are given a two-dimensional array/list of integers consisting of 0s and 1s. In the list, 1 represents land and 0 represents water.

The task is to find the number of distinct islands where a group of connected 1s(horizontally or vertically) forms an island.

Note:
Two islands are considered to be the same if and only if one island is equal to another(not rotated or reflected) i.e if we can translate one island on another without rotating or reflecting then it would be considered as the same islands. 
For example:
1 1 0
0 0 1
0 0 1

In this example, we have two islands and they would be considered as distinct islands as we can not translate them on one another even if they have the same no of 1's.
For example :
1 1 0 0 0 
1 1 0 0 0
0 0 0 1 1
0 0 0 1 1

In this example, we have two islands and they are the same as we can translate one island onto another island, so our answer should be 1.
Problem approach

I used Depth-first search to determine connected components.

Try solving now
02
Round
Easy
Face to Face
Duration50 minutes
Interview date1 Jul 2019
Coding problem1

This was a Data Structural round.

1. Word Wrap

Moderate
20m average time
75% success
0/80
Asked in companies
MicrosoftGrowwHike

You are given ‘N’ words of various lengths, now you have to arrange these words in such a way that each line contains at most ‘M’ characters and each word is separated by a space character. The cost of each line is equal to the cube of extra space characters required to complete ‘M’ characters in that particular line. Total cost is equal to the sum of costs of each line.

Your task is to form this arrangement with the minimum cost possible and return the minimum total cost.

Note:
The length of each word should be less than or equal to ‘M’.

You can’t break a word, i.e. the entire word should come in the same line and it must not be the case that a part of it comes in the first line and another part on the next line.
Problem approach

I first used recursion and then converted it to a dynamic programming based solution.

Try solving now
03
Round
Easy
Face to Face
Duration60 minutes
Interview date1 Jul 2019
Coding problem1

This was a System Design round.

1. System Design

Design something similar to red bus which can handle bookings and can onboard vendors and customers to their platform

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Clear out the requirements first.
Tip 2 : Convey your thoughts regularly and don't overthink the problem.
Tip 3 : Design small and then expand.

04
Round
Easy
Face to Face
Duration50 minutes
Interview date1 Jul 2019
Coding problem1

This was a System Design round

1. System Design

Design synchronous system which can handle producers and consumers. Pretty much the same as a producer-consumer problem. However, the discussion went deep into implementation and the pros and cons.

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Have your basics cleared out.
Tip 2 : Be well versed in multi-threading

05
Round
Easy
Face to Face
Duration50 minutes
Interview date1 Sep 2019
Coding problem1

This was an HR round.

1. HR Questions

It was more or less focused on the previous experience. Idea was to check the fitment for the team and Microsoft culture.

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Be open and honest about your work.
Tip 2 : Try to answer questions objectively where they can measure your impact and the value your brought to the company.

Here's your problem of the day

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

Skill covered: Programming

Which operator is used for exponentiation in Python?

Choose another skill to practice
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