I had a screening call about four weeks after initially contacting the recruiter. After the screening call, I didn’t get any response. I followed up myself multiple times. The recruiter, who works for Microsoft, said the prescreen went well. Then they said the position was no longer available and suggested a different position. I waited a few more weeks. Then I got a call that I needed to make an interview trip within a week and a half. I took time off for the interview. Microsoft paid for the hotel and flight, but at least in my case, it was a six-hour flight in a middle seat both ways. The team I was going to be working with is local, so it’s not clear why the trip was necessary.

When the interview was scheduled, I got an email stating that I would be getting a call confirming interview details the day before. I never received a call, so I wasn’t sure if it was still on. I had to reach out to the recruiter and HR to find out if the interview was still on. It turned out HR was on vacation. The recruiter confirmed the interview was still on but didn’t have the details.

I flew in. I got the interview details, who I was meeting, and when.

None of the interviewers had my resume prior to the interview, and neither did HR. Somehow, they couldn’t download it from the Microsoft career website.

I met my first interviewer on time. The meeting room where the interview was scheduled actually doesn’t exist in the building. The interviewer was very nice. The discussion lasted about an hour. Then I was told the team had meetings, so I had to hang out for two hours and wait for the next interviewer. I got a free lunch while waiting.

Questions were mostly straightforward and not difficult. The interview team were all immigrants from India. I am an immigrant too, so it just looked not diverse. The interviewers were polite and courteous. I sent them a thank you and waited. Two weeks passed. I reached out to find out hey or nay. The recruiter eventually called back and said although the interview went great, they went with another candidate who is a better fit, whatever that means.

Overall, I walked away with the sense that they already had someone in mind they were going with and just needed to run interviews to make it look competitive internally.

If you had to write a new browser, how would you store user settings?

How many files would your settings need?

Look at an architecture and describe its weaknesses.

Why do you want to work for Microsoft?

Why should I hire you?

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Explain how OAuth works.

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