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

SDE - 1

Microsoft
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5 rounds | 6 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Preparation
Duration: 2 months
Topics: System Design, SOLID Principles, OOPS, Data Structures, Operating System basics
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Prepare LLD and Solid principles, there are ample of videos/blogs available online
Tip 2 : For DSA, prepare standard questions really well and prepare using company tag questions.
Tip 3 : Prepare for Machine coding rounds too, not asked in Microsoft but some companies ask for it

Application process
Where: Email Approach
Eligibility: No
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Don't clutter it and mention only things that you really know.
Tip 2 : Prepare a speech/writeup for the projects that you did

Interview rounds

01
Round
Easy
Online Coding Interview
Duration75 Minutes
Interview date5 Feb 2015
Coding problem2

2 DSA questions, 1 question to fix syntax error

1. Debugging Question

Given a C++ program, it is not doing what it is supposed to do, fix it without changing more than 1 line

Problem approach

just ran the code, saw the output and then saw what was expected, based on that debugged the program line by line

2. Number of Connected Computers.

Moderate
10m average time
90% success
0/80
Asked in companies
FacebookOracleMicrosoft

You have been given a grid ‘ARR’ of size ‘N' * M’. ‘ARR[i][j]’ is ‘1’ if the computer is present at position ‘(i,j)’ otherwise it is zero. A computer is said to be a connected computer if there is a computer in its row or column other than itself. Your task is to return the number of connected computers.

Example:

subsequence

Let’s say you have a grid [[1,0],[1,1]]. We can say the computer ‘ARR[0][0]’ is a connected computer because there is a computer in its column other than itself. We can say the computer ‘arr[1][0]’ is a connected computer because there is a computer in its row and column other than itself. We can say the computer ‘arr[1][1]’ is a connected computer because there is a computer in its row other than itself. Therefore the number of connected computers is 3.
Problem approach

This is a standard problem and we can solve it using bfs or dfs

Try solving now
02
Round
Medium
Video Call
Duration60 Minutes
Interview date11 Feb 2022
Coding problem1

1 DSA question was asked

1. Distance between two nodes of a Tree

Moderate
25m average time
60% success
0/80
Asked in companies
PhilipsSAP LabsPhonePe

Given a binary tree and the value of two nodes, find the distance between the given two nodes of the Binary Tree.

Distance between two nodes is defined as the minimum number of edges in the path from one node to another.

Problem approach

I found the LCA of tree (a standard problem) and then we have to add up distance from LCA to first node and distance from LCA to second node.
PS : This is a standard problem and is available online easily

Try solving now
03
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration60
Interview date11 Feb 2022
Coding problem1

1 DSA question was asked

1. Strongly Connected Components (Tarjan’s Algorithm)

Hard
15m average time
85% success
0/120
Asked in companies
AppleMicrosoftAmazon

You are given an unweighted directed graph of 'V' vertices and 'E' edges. Your task is to print all the strongly connected components (SCCs) present in the graph.

Problem approach

first i found all the connected components using bfs and decided who is the root of each component. A node is root of a component if there is no other node pointing towards it. After this I created a hashmap of node to list of nodes.
key - list of all other nodes of a connected component
value - root of component.

Now if i am given a node, i can see if it is part of the key of hashmap and then can find the root using the value of it.

Try solving now
04
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration60 Minutes
Interview date14 Feb 2022
Coding problem1

An LLD question was asked

1. System Design Question

Given n servers, we need to store blobs in those servers and we should make K replicas of each blob. I was supposed to discuss HLD of this, make LLD and also write some code for APIs (i wasn't asked to run the code though)

Problem approach

Tip 1: You will be given a vague problem statement, you'll have to discuss with interviewer to make it more clear
Tip 2: In each LLD/HLD question, there would be some part of it in which you will be more confident, try to focus on that and tell the interviewer your different approaches to build that particular component.
Tip 3: There is not right answer to these type of questions, whatever choices you make, you should be able to justify and you should be fine

05
Round
Easy
Video Call
Duration60 Minutes
Interview date14 Feb 2022
Coding problem1

This was mostly a manager round and we discussed about projects and few OS concepts.

1. Operating System Based Questions

This was mostly discussion with manager, we discussed about my projects that i had mentioned in resume, after that manager asked very basic OS questions like - 
1. what is a system call
2. what is kernel mode

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Don't lie in your resume
Tip 2 : You should be prepared about the projects that you have mentioned in your resume, they will ask technical questions about it
Tip 3 : prepare basic OS.

Here's your problem of the day

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

Skill covered: Programming

How do you remove whitespace from the start of a string?

Choose another skill to practice
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