I had an on-campus interview at my college, then I was flown out to Redmond for an on-site interview. I met with the on-site recruiter at 9 AM and the interview started at 10 AM. I tried getting water at Building 28, where my interview was, but the receptionist was unhelpful and irritated. She then began complaining about crooked posters in her building. Generally, it was not a good vibe.

The technical interviews started at 10 AM, and I had a total of four.

I noticed that all the engineers had their own rooms, not an open floor plan. This suggests to me that Microsoft isn't very open. All the interviewers had worked at Microsoft for at least 10 years and seemed unenthusiastic about their jobs. The way they spoke about their work and presented themselves made it seem like their careers revolved solely around Microsoft, with no plans to move elsewhere. They likely felt their careers were stagnant, and staying at Microsoft was the safest option.

All interviewers didn't ask me why I chose computer science as a major, which is odd, as they also didn't ask why I wanted to work at Microsoft. This makes me feel they don't value a candidate's excitement to work there.

Overall, the experience was negative because the interviewers weren't excited about their jobs. They seemed to be working there because they needed a job. Even my recruiter didn't seem happy.

I like to see people excited about their projects. I believe in Microsoft's mission, but the people there do not seem very motivated.

Given a root node to a binary tree, reconstruct it and return its root node.

Given a 2D matrix and a string, write a function to check if the string is contained in the 2D matrix.

Run-length encoding: write a compression function given an input array and an output array of bytes.

• Design an API for searching for contact information.
• Choose a data structure for the search function.
• Implement the search function.