I was contacted by a Microsoft recruiter on LinkedIn.

I had my first screen call with the recruiter within two weeks and expressed my interest in the Dev Lead position. It took a month to receive a phone interview.

The interviewer was half an hour late, so the interview felt rushed. He was a nice guy and asked simple questions for about thirty minutes. He used an online tool to test my coding skills with a simple problem: swapping two by two items in a linked list.

I received an approval email for an on-site interview the day after. It took another three weeks to attend the on-site interview at the Vancouver office. The interview started very early, at 7:30 AM, with introductions, followed by the first interview at 8 AM.

The first interviewer was a Software Manager. He asked about my background, current company, and role. Then, he posed a question about a data structure for storing a large amount of integers with efficient Insert, Delete, and Median functions. I answered by discussing the pros and cons of various data structures. I struggled initially to find the best logic for the median function but received a clue and was able to answer the question before the end of the interview.

My second interview went very well, about 95% correct. The interviewer was a Dev Lead. He asked similar introductory questions about my background and then presented two coding questions. I answered both perfectly without help, with only one or two minor mistakes in boundary checks that I easily identified during review. I finished the interview five minutes early. He then asked some web-related questions since we had time left, and I answered all except one.

After the second interview, the recruiter approached me and stated that the team did not wish to interview me further. I was shocked. This felt like a bad sign, as I had read that not proceeding to a third or fourth interview often indicates you haven't made it.

I mentioned that I had applied for a Dev Lead position and had not yet been asked any leadership or management questions. I was very disappointed after two weeks of preparation and studying for over 500 interviews.

I am very sorry if my interviewers believe that, given my performance, resume, and the absence of any leadership or management questions, their time is not worthy of more than two interviews with me. I am extremely disappointed because I dedicated days and hours to prepare for them, only to be disregarded. I think it wasn't my lucky day. One needs luck, in addition to perfect preparation and knowledge, to succeed.

Expected questions.

Unexpected evaluation.