My first communications with Microsoft were during campus recruiting. I attended their events, primarily because I was interested in the company and the advice they offered, not because I was initially set on an internship with them (though I ended up getting one anyway!). I was thrilled and shocked when I found out I had an on-campus interview!

To prepare, I bought a book called "Cracking the Coding Interview." It's magical, I'm telling you. I highly recommend it. The day finally arrived!

On-Campus Interview: This interview was half an hour long. Firstly, the interviewer had Windows 8 on a touchscreen computer, which he let me explore. I asked him some semi-informed questions (I had done a little bit of research on Windows 8 beforehand), which I think he appreciated. For example: "The design seems like it's made for a touchscreen, like you have here. Is it still good with a mouse?"

Next, he started with the famed questions. It wasn't hard, especially because I had practiced binary tree traversal. Given a binary tree, the task was to multiply the value in each node by 2. Once I did that, there was the expected "Ok, now test it." I came up with several test cases, including seeing what would happen if the values were large enough to cause integer overflow once multiplied by two. He said he'd never heard that answer before, which I guarantee was the thing that got me to the second interview.

The next question was an object-oriented design question for which I had no idea of the answer, so I was convinced I'd bombed my interview.

The next day, I got an email inviting me to a second-round interview in Redmond! I was shocked, humbled, and more. About a month and a half later, I was off to Seattle, convinced that I was dreadfully underprepared.

Second Round Interview: If you make it here, LEAVE THE HOTEL EARLY. I got so lost and was barely on time. First thing in the morning: Meet with the recruiter. She informed me that I'd be interviewing with the Windows Phone team. I'd never touched a Windows phone, so I figured I was doomed, but it turns out they're not interested in your experience with specific technologies!

Now, most candidates have a lunch interview, but my interviewer actually forgot to do that. So, I was unlucky enough to have four (mostly) intense interviews on an empty stomach (he was very ashamed later!).

• Interview 1: The hardest of them all, I thought. My interviewer was really intense (and really smart; I respected him!) and asked me to implement a linked list. Also, basic object-oriented principles were covered.
• Interview 2: My interviewer found out that I like Project Euler, so he asked me a programming question based on that. Also, he wrote code on the board and asked me to find the bug.
• Interview 3: One of the coolest guys I've ever met. He pretty much did a full-blown personality analysis on me (scarily accurate) within the first 5 minutes of meeting me. Then he asked me a brainteaser that I couldn't get the final answer to, but he seemed okay with that.
• Interview 4: Finally, a non-technical interview! It was with the manager, who told me that my interview was going great (not what I was thinking, so it was a relief!). We talked about life at Microsoft, etc., and then he sent me home.

I waited for 2 days (which seemed like eons) to hear back from them. I wasn't confident, but I really wanted to know so that I could move on with my life. The recruiter responded with a short reply to my thank-you email, stating that Microsoft wanted to offer me the internship! She then called me to discuss the offer and told me that the team wanted me to know that they had interviewed several people for the position, but I was their top choice (which really, really shocked me!). I accepted!

Final notes: Be enthusiastic. Prepare. Don't make yourself seem like all you do with your life is computers, but really, know a lot about coding. Ask intelligent questions (and clarifying questions!).

I can't wait to start. Good luck to you!

You have a building with 100 stories. You also have two glass balls. You can drop the glass balls as many times as you want before they break. How can you find the floor at which they start breaking with the fewest number of drops?

Implement a linked list.

Given an integer, write a function that rotates the digits to the right.

How would you test this plastic, compostable knife?