A recruiter called me to schedule a phone screen technical interview with a developer team lead. The technical interview was supposed to be an hour but lasted an hour and a half; the team lead was very interested in my project work, and the overall impression was very positive, even though no coding was tested during the phone screen.

Before I stepped into the office, I received an email requesting me to fly to Seattle and meet the team the following week. Scheduling was very easy, and I had no issues getting to Seattle. A rental car was even booked for me, and meals and parking can be expensed.

The first interview was with the recruiter, who was very friendly and provided some insightful information on how the interviews work and a schedule with the people I would meet. She also mentioned that there were multiple teams monitoring these interviews and that if I did well, there would be additional interviews that were not on the schedule.

While there was a lunch interview that was a bit more casual (no whiteboard, no coding), I didn't let my guard down. All other interviews were highly technical and required coding or analyzing code.

I eventually met double the number of people I was scheduled for, and the interviews lasted 7 hours. It was a grueling day, and one interviewer asked me questions outside of my knowledge zone, but it was extremely insightful as to the difficulty level of a first-tier software tech company interview. I learned a lot about what was being expected at Microsoft.

Implement a stack.