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      Software Development Engineer Interview

      22 Mar 2011
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Neutral experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied through university. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Microsoft in Mar 2011

      Interview

      Submitted resume through my university and got invited to interview on-campus two weeks later. The person in the career fair was very nice and helpful. One day before the interview, the two persons from Microsoft held an event for all the candidates. Very few questions were asked by the candidates as the two interviewers spent a lot of time talking about the company. The day of the interview, the interviewer was nice for about 2 minutes. After that, he started behaving very disinterested and spent more time looking at his laptop screen than listening to what I had to say. His behavior made me very nervous, and plenty of times he interrupted to give me hints that I didn't need. Any pause for a few seconds would result in a comment along the lines of "You aren't doing what I asked." Two weeks after the interview I received an e-mail to tell me I didn't make it to the 2nd round. My overall impression is that unless you can code recursive algorithms in less than five minutes, you shouldn't apply at Microsoft. Also to potential candidates don't forget to prepare for behavioral questions.

      Interview questions [4]

      Question 1

      Why do you want to be a Software Engineer?
      Answer question

      Question 2

      Given an array of sorted integers where duplicates are allowed, find the index of the first number I give you?
      7 Answers

      Question 3

      What is the runtime?
      1 Answer

      Question 4

      Can you find a better solution?
      1 Answer
      2

      Other Software Development Engineer interview reviews for Microsoft

      Software Development Engineer I Interview

      22 Jul 2025
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Microsoft

      Interview

      It started with a 90-minute online assessment, followed by a technical phone screen with one engineer. The OA covered two medium-to-hard algorithm problems. For coding practice, I mainly rely on "LeetCode" to cover different topics. For company-specific interview preparation, I use "Hack2Hire", "LeetCode Discuss", and "1Point3Acres" to find any recent original questions. All of them are helpful platforms. The phone screen included one coding problem and some discussion around edge cases and time complexity.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Given a list of meeting time intervals, determine if a person could attend all meetings.
      1 Answer

      Software Development Engineer Interview

      20 Jun 2025
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Positive experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Microsoft in Dec 2024

      Interview

      I was invited to a technical interview with Microsoft. The interviewer started with a general question: “What happens when you type google.com into your browser?” They asked a few follow-up questions related to that. After that, they gave me a LeetCode algorithmic question, which was at a hard level. The problem was “Integer to English Words.”

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      1. What happens when you type google.com into your browser? 2. “Integer to English Words” – LeetCode algorithmic question
      Answer question

      Software Development Engineer Interview

      28 Feb 2024
      Anonymous employee
      Shanghai, Shanghai
      Accepted offer
      Positive experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I interviewed at Microsoft (Shanghai, Shanghai)

      Interview

      Three tech interviews + one hiring manager VO, most of questions are medium to hard leetcode questions. Ask some questions about techniques you written on the resume. But I think they care more about the match of the research and the job.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      Tell me about the recommendation System you made for the work.
      Answer question
      1

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