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Software Development Engineer Interview Experience - Redmond, Washington

January 1, 2013
Negative ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I posted the questions below.

This post is focused on the final onsite interview, not the HR or first-round interview.

I really didn't like the process. I was interviewing for SDE but got mostly design questions, nothing on data structures and algorithms. If you are good at designing software architectures (UML + implementation), then you would have aced it.

Only three interviews for me.

Some advice: The process is so random; you can get easy interview questions or hard ones. So, I think getting hired is mostly based on luck, the focus of the questions they ask you, and how experienced the interviewer is.

Two of my interviewers were at Microsoft for a long time, so they were really cooperative. One guy was pretty new there and wasn't very responsive when I told him my solution.

Like I said, I applied for SDE, but all the questions were mostly on design, nothing about algorithms, no testing, and no time complexity analysis.

Questions

Find the last substring occurrence's first element. Example: string: "abcdefab" and substring: "ab". Answer should return 6.

Design an elevator (UML + implementation + threads & synchronization and locking).

Design the game Battleship (UML + Implementation).

Reverse a sentence.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 214 interview experiences for the Microsoft Software Development Engineer role in Redmond, Washington.

Success Rate

45%
Pass Rate

Microsoft's interview process for their Software Development Engineer roles in Redmond, Washington is fairly selective, failing a large portion of engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive75%
Neutral17%
Negative8%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Microsoft's Software Development Engineer interview process in Redmond, Washington.

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