They paid for your travel and stay in Seattle, WA. The interview process consisted of 5 rounds, which were very tough and long.

The Microsoft staffer spoke with me first by phone, discussing my projects, goals, Microsoft, the Live Search team, and my interest.

They then set up a phone screen with the development lead of the team I was interviewing for, which was scheduled for about a week later.

This phone call was postponed due to a meeting at Microsoft, and I actually completed it a few days later than originally planned.

Given a set of 21 tasks = {A, B, ..., Z} excluding I, O, U, X, and Q. Each task requires 4 hours of processing, except for tasks E, Y, P, R, W, which require 8 hours of processing.

You have 3 machines to process these tasks: T1, T2, and T3.

T1 and T2 are available daily for 8 hours. T3 is available only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for 8 hours.

You are given 3 lists that indicate the dependency list among the tasks:

L1: A -> R -> K -> M (e.g., A can be completed if R is completed, R can be completed only if K is completed, etc.) L2: N -> G -> V -> E -> Z -> H L3: C -> F -> Y -> D -> J -> P -> T -> S -> W -> B -> C (cycle)