I am posting and rating this interview experience as negative only because of one person, a Senior SDE, who was involved in the process. I will address her behavior later.

First things first, the Hiring Manager and Product Manager were really nice people and very professional. My first interview was with the Product Manager, which lasted 45 minutes and involved ethical, behavioral, and product-related questions. My second interview was a technical loop with the Senior SDE, which I will discuss later in a separate paragraph.

My third interview was with the Hiring Manager. It lasted beyond the allotted 60 minutes, and while I was asked some tough questions, we both enjoyed the conversation, and he seemed impressed with my talk and experience. After the interview, the Hiring Manager told me he would make a hiring decision by the end of the next day, as he would be meeting everyone that evening or the next morning.

After the interview, I had the gut feeling that I had aced all three interviews. While I can't comment on how my answers to behavioral and ethical questions were received, I was told on the spot by the Product Manager that some of my answers were correct, which was a test of core values.

My only concern was the technical interview. Even though I believe I nailed every question asked, it was due to the interviewer's behavior and conduct. Now, let's jump into what happened in the technical round.

I was introduced to the Senior SDE by the Product Manager. She was a tester for most of her career at Microsoft, and I believe she was made an SDE due to recent changes at Microsoft.

It was supposed to be a 90-minute lunch interview, with lunch from 12:00 to 12:30 PM and the interview continuing in the conference room from 12:30 to 1:30 PM.

I greeted the Senior SDE, but I received no response. She ignored the schedule and directly took me to the conference room for the interview. She did not have a copy of my resume, so I shared one of the four or five copies I had with me.

She asked me a T-SQL question on the whiteboard, which I resolved in about 5 seconds. She then seemed surprised and tried to make it more complicated, but I resolved that too quickly. Next, she asked what would happen if each of these intervals were dynamic. I resolved that as well, and after she stated it wouldn't work, I suggested we test it, which it did. She accepted that it would work.

She then asked me a ranking function-related T-SQL question, which I again resolved in about 10 seconds. She then asked how I would test it. I suggested 7 or 8 test cases and explained how they could all be written in a VS DB unit testing project.

My resume lists other areas such as Big Data, Machine Learning, Python, Java, and Data Science. It was very clear that she had no experience with any of these, as she completely ignored asking any related questions.

She then asked how I would predict sales amounts for our product, which is a very open-ended question. I discussed it for about 10 minutes, covering different feature selection, model selection, and validation techniques, as well as challenges around the curse of dimensionality and how to address them. It became clear that she didn't understand what I was talking about, and she didn't ask a single follow-up question.

The only question she asked me was, "How much of these have you implemented?"

Based on her facial expressions and posture, I became sure that she had not come prepared for the interview and also did not know much about ML/Data Science/Data Warehouse/Big Data/MPP, and analytical technologies, for which she was supposed to interview me.

She then asked if I knew .NET (which was not listed on my resume). I said no. She then replied, "Oh, you know Java?" I said yes, as it was on my resume, expecting some follow-up algorithm or OOP questions. However, she didn't ask me any questions related to algorithms or OOP.

She then ended the interview by asking if I had any questions.

After the interview, she took me to the lunch area at Microsoft. Although it was a sponsored lunch interview, I paid for my own lunch as she directed me to pay!

Afterward, she seemed to want to leave me unattended. Though my Microsoft-issued ID stated I should be escorted at all times for security reasons, I asked her if I could sit in the conference room until my next interview. She replied yes and then asked me to walk myself to the Hiring Manager's room after 15 minutes. She left me unescorted for the next 15 minutes.

I greeted her before she left, but she did not reply and just left. The only impression I got at the end of this interview with her was that she did not like me at all from the very beginning. Later, it took me 5 minutes to find the Hiring Manager's room.

While I am not in a position to comment on the competencies and professional behavior of any individual, this is the last thing I was expecting from a Microsoft Senior Software Developer. I would definitely like Microsoft HR to look into this issue.

Some very good questions on ethics and product design.