For those of you who have interviewed with MS before, any comments on what its like or suggestions? Do they still ask those lateral thinking "see your thought process" type of questions? The interview is for the Software Developer Engineer or Program Manager track.
Microsoft Interview Today!
- Thread starter Chronoshock
- Start date
I've not interviewed for microsoft, but I'm curious about how it goes for you. Please let us know how it goes and what the outcome is! Goodluck!
Rogo
Rogo
Thanks for the well wishes, I have a ton of class material to review. I'll probably be interviewing with the Speech group as thats my field of research. I need to go through my speech recognition and natural language processing notes.
The recruiter stated that hiring decisions will be made based off of this interview. I always figured MS had multiple rounds of interviews.
The recruiter stated that hiring decisions will be made based off of this interview. I always figured MS had multiple rounds of interviews.
Gibson486
Lifer
- Aug 9, 2000
- 18,378
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For an internship, it was lots of brain teasers and coding questions. It's nothing like what Google asks (their coding questions are hardcore). When i went, they asked me questions about how i precieved an apple and how i would describe it. I don't remember the coding questions because i did not know any of them at that time, so i chose to eliminate them from my memory. This was about 3 or 4 years ago.
I'm hoping they don't kill you over non-optimal (or non-existent) answers to coding questions. Are they more to see how you think and less about what you know? I should probably flip through the CLRS book since I've forgotten a lot of what I've learned.
Gibson486
Lifer
- Aug 9, 2000
- 18,378
- 2
- 0
well...I am an EE at heart and, aside from scripts, coding was never my thing so asking me how hard questions are may not be best thing.`IMHO, however, the questions are not easy like "What is a pointer?", but they are not difficult like some of the questions that Google asks. i would imagine that you would have to get the question right to let them know that you know what you are doing. When is your interview? i can ask one of my former class mates who actually got offerd an internship at Microsoft a few years ago.
Either this thursday or friday. I'm guessing the questions are somewhat harder for full time positions.
Deeko
Lifer
- Jun 16, 2000
- 30,213
- 12
- 81
I interviewed for the SDE position last year.
Don't expect any "logic" or "brain teaser" questions that the internet says are synonymous with Microsoft. They don't do that anymore. What you CAN expect is coding, coding, coding. They'll give you a coding question and ask you to write your solution on the whiteboard. After you come up with a solution (if you can't figure it out they'll "help" you along, but very little), you'll be asked to optimize it, often more than once.
I can give you the following advice: A) Come prepared with lots and lots of questions. Other than the coding questions, they'll tell you about themselves and then ask if you have questions. use that time wisely. Show that you're excited about technology, coding, etc. B) Explain your thinking as you code, and when you're stuck. They want to know that you're thinking and not just staring at the whiteboard. Getting it 100% right isn't required, but showing that you know how to code and know how to think is.
My interview went from 10am to 4:30pm. I had 1 with a recruiter and then 5 technical interviews. I screwed up the first one (I initially drew a blank on how to set up the loop to draw a circle on the screen...brain fart) and completely nailed the next 4, and still didn't get the job so uhh...don't screw up, haha. All the interviewers talk to each other between interviews so they know what you did right/wrong at the previous interview, and will often try to build on that.
The questions I got were (it was a year ago...trying to remember)
1) write a function to draw a circle on the screen (most basic answer is a nested for loop, 1 for each quadrant). Optimize to run in 1/8 that time.
2) write the C function StrTok
3) write an insert function for a binary tree
4) write a conversion function that turns the "remainder" function into the "modulus" function
umm...there were 2 or 3 questions involving arrays/hash tables and sorting that I can't remember off the top of my head. The vast majority of their software is still written in C, with some C++, so if you're like me and haven't down lower-level stuff in awhile (going into the interview, my last few years had been c#), be sure to study up on pointers, bitwise operations, etc.
Good luck
Don't expect any "logic" or "brain teaser" questions that the internet says are synonymous with Microsoft. They don't do that anymore. What you CAN expect is coding, coding, coding. They'll give you a coding question and ask you to write your solution on the whiteboard. After you come up with a solution (if you can't figure it out they'll "help" you along, but very little), you'll be asked to optimize it, often more than once.
I can give you the following advice: A) Come prepared with lots and lots of questions. Other than the coding questions, they'll tell you about themselves and then ask if you have questions. use that time wisely. Show that you're excited about technology, coding, etc. B) Explain your thinking as you code, and when you're stuck. They want to know that you're thinking and not just staring at the whiteboard. Getting it 100% right isn't required, but showing that you know how to code and know how to think is.
My interview went from 10am to 4:30pm. I had 1 with a recruiter and then 5 technical interviews. I screwed up the first one (I initially drew a blank on how to set up the loop to draw a circle on the screen...brain fart) and completely nailed the next 4, and still didn't get the job so uhh...don't screw up, haha. All the interviewers talk to each other between interviews so they know what you did right/wrong at the previous interview, and will often try to build on that.
The questions I got were (it was a year ago...trying to remember)
1) write a function to draw a circle on the screen (most basic answer is a nested for loop, 1 for each quadrant). Optimize to run in 1/8 that time.
2) write the C function StrTok
3) write an insert function for a binary tree
4) write a conversion function that turns the "remainder" function into the "modulus" function
umm...there were 2 or 3 questions involving arrays/hash tables and sorting that I can't remember off the top of my head. The vast majority of their software is still written in C, with some C++, so if you're like me and haven't down lower-level stuff in awhile (going into the interview, my last few years had been c#), be sure to study up on pointers, bitwise operations, etc.
Good luck
Do you think that screwing up on one interview question really prevented you from getting the job? What was your previous experience like?
Good luck in the interview ... god, I'm applying for dev. positions as well (though not MS), and it has been a while since I was actually hardcore into programming, as my position now is mainly support. I hope my next interview goes smooth too :thumbsup:
Deeko
Lifer
- Jun 16, 2000
- 30,213
- 12
- 81
tfinch2, that was the only question asked by that particular interviewer, and he was a senior member of the team (Word) I was interviewing with...so I imagine he held more sway than the others. This was for an entry-level position out of college, and I went to a co-op school so I had multiple full-time internships doing real, meaningful programming work, which most entry-level people don't. Considering that the rest of my interview went very well, yes, that's the only thing I can point to that would have hurt me. Someone else interviewing for that position probably went through and aced the interview, so he got it over me. No hard feelings.
Microsoft is a little different in the way they recruit. They have hundreds of programmer openings at a given time, but you're only interviewing for one of them - it doesn't mean you can't get a job at Microsoft, just that you didn't get THAT position. They invite you to apply again to a different team, given that you aren't a complete moron. I'll probably apply again at some point, but I ended up getting an offer from Lockheed, in this area (philly), so I didn't bother at the time.
Microsoft is a little different in the way they recruit. They have hundreds of programmer openings at a given time, but you're only interviewing for one of them - it doesn't mean you can't get a job at Microsoft, just that you didn't get THAT position. They invite you to apply again to a different team, given that you aren't a complete moron. I'll probably apply again at some point, but I ended up getting an offer from Lockheed, in this area (philly), so I didn't bother at the time.
Thanks for info, I'm pretty rusty with C/C++ since my primary language is Java. I really need to read up on pointer operations and memory management. Unfortunately I have only a day or two to do this, and a mountain of schoolwork that needs to be done at the same time.
Aikouka
Lifer
- Nov 27, 2001
- 30,383
- 912
- 126
I don't know, from what Deeko said, it sounds like they really want to know how you go about a problem more than the exact solution. So I'd assume that if you didn't remember some archaic and barely-used-in-your-studies function and just psuedo-coded it, I doubt they'd care. I don't do interviews, but if I did, I'd focus mostly on how people go about solving a problem... how do they think. I mean, as a tutor for programming courses in college, I found it interesting how there's a schism of CS students where one group just kind of hammers out a problem but the other will really delve in and just know what to do.
Kind of like that circle problem, my mind starts with, "what exactly is a circle." As dumb as it sounds, computers don't know most tangible things the way we do and we have to think of how a computer can represent them rather than how we may.
Kind of like that circle problem, my mind starts with, "what exactly is a circle." As dumb as it sounds, computers don't know most tangible things the way we do and we have to think of how a computer can represent them rather than how we may.
Luckily, I'm not being flown out, because I don't think I'd have the time. They're conducting a one round on-campus interview here (MIT) for probably ~4 people total. Just got the confirmation email, it looks like I'll be speaking with Office Labs, Live Labs, and Search for all of the software positions (SDE/SDET/PM).
Today's the day, 5-6 hours of grueling questions. I only had a few hours to prepare, hope it goes well.
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