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

SDE - 2

Microsoft
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3 rounds | 5 Coding problems

Interview preparation journey

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Journey
I was advised by my seniors to practice DSA from the very starting of B.Tech but I did not took that seriously. Honestly speaking, I regretted not taking their advice and in third year I started doing coding and I had to increase practice hours because I started late. But by the end of Third year, I was confident in both DSA and development but even then, I kept on revising the concepts.
Application story
I applied through their website. After almost a week, HR called and confirmed all details and then a week later, interviews were scheduled on Zoom to evaluate on basis of DSA and System design mainly.
Why selected/rejected for the role?
Every thing was fine but in the third round, I was asked a question related to shell scripting which I was not able to answer correctly. It required some deep knowledge. So always understand every concept in depth and mention only those things in resume that you are confident about.
Preparation
Duration: 3 Months
Topics: Algorithms, System Design, Fundamentals, Problem Solving, Behavioral
Tip
Tip

Tip 1 : Focus on fundamentals
Tip 2 : Focus on problem solving skills
Tip 3 : Be consistent

Application process
Where: Campus
Eligibility: 7 CGPA
Resume Tip
Resume tip

Tip 1 : Do not bloat your resume with nonsense, add only what you have done and only major projects.
Tip 2 : Be crisp - adding 10 programming languages to your resume won't take you anywhere but understanding 1 language with heart is definitely a major plus.

Interview rounds

01
Round
Medium
Online Coding Test
Duration70 Minutes
Interview date11 Mar 2021
Coding problem2

Discussion about current work projects. Lengthy discussion on some technical issue that you were stuck for a long time. How did you find the issue, how did you fix it, could you do it any better now.

1. Rearrange string

Hard
50m average time
50% success
0/120
Asked in companies
eBayAdobeMicrosoft

You are given a string “S”. Your task is to rearrange the characters of a string “S”, such that it does not contain any two adjacent characters which are the same.

If it is possible to rearrange the string “S”, then print any possible arrangement. else, print “not possible” without quotes.

For Example:

For a string  “qaacde”, This string has two same adjacent characters.
So, one possible way to rearrange the string is “qacade”. Now, this string does not have two adjacent characters that are the same. 
Try solving now
Hard
20m average time
80% success
0/120
Asked in companies
Goldman SachsUberApple

You are given an arbitrary binary tree, a node of the tree, and an integer 'K'. You need to find all such nodes which have a distance K from the given node and return the list of these nodes.


Distance between two nodes in a binary tree is defined as the number of connections/edges in the path between the two nodes.


Note:

1. A binary tree is a tree in which each node has at most two children. 
2. The given tree will be non-empty.
3. The given tree can have multiple nodes with the same value.
4. If there are no nodes in the tree which are at distance = K from the given node, return an empty list.
5. You can return the list of values of valid nodes in any order. For example if the valid nodes have values 1,2,3, then you can return {1,2,3} or {3,1,2} etc.
Example :

Sample Output 2 explanation

Consider this tree above. The target node is 5 and K = 3. The nodes at distance 1 from node 5 are {2}, nodes at distance 2 from node 5 are {1, 4} and nodes at distance 3 from node 5 are {6, 3}.
Try solving now
02
Round
Hard
Video Call
Duration90 Minutes
Interview date12 Mar 2021
Coding problem2

1. My Calendar

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

Given ‘N’ events each with a ‘start’ and ‘end’ time in the form of intervals such that it represents a booking on the half-open interval [start, end), i.e., the range of real numbers x such that start <= x < end. Initially, the calendar has no events. A new event can be added to the calendar, if adding the event will not cause a triple booking. A triple booking happens when three events have some non-empty intersection (i.e., there exists a time common to all the 3 events).

Your task is to process the 'N' events, and for each of the events, add that event to the calendar and return ‘True’, if the event can be added to the calendar successfully without causing a triple booking. Otherwise, return ‘False’ and do not add that event to the calendar.

Try solving now

2. System Design Question

Given a System API to manage memory which allocates memory of size 1024 bytes only, create a wrapper to allocate memory efficiently. Deep discussion about why I used X data structure why not Y.

Problem approach

=

03
Round
Easy
HR Round
Duration30 Minutes
Interview date12 Mar 2021
Coding problem1

Basic HR round

1. Basic HR Questions

What keeps you motivated?

Who is your role model?

Problem approach

Tip 1 : Be confident
Tip 2 : Eye contact is must with soft smile on your face

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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