The interview process began with a brief, in-person technical screening, followed by an onsite interview.

The onsite experience was the most impersonal I've ever had with a company. Approximately 40 candidates were present. Interviewers would enter the room, find candidates by name, and then escort them to separate interview rooms.

I was scheduled for four technical interview rounds, but one interviewer did not show up, resulting in only three rounds.

Throughout the interviews, I was only asked technical questions, with very little discussion about my background. Two interviewers explicitly stated they had not reviewed my resume. Candidates are not informed of the team they are interviewing with until their arrival.

HR engaged in the typical "So... Do you have any other offers?" questioning.

However, any perceived lack of personality from Microsoft was compensated by an exceptionally generous compensation package. The company provided ample resources to ensure candidates were well taken care of during their time there.

Given a directory string, such as "c/a/../b/./d", write a method that outputs the final directory (in this example, "c/b/d"). A "." input stays in the current directory, and a ".." input goes back one directory.

Design a method midNumbers(start, end, length) that prints the middle values between two integers. For example, midNumbers(0, 5, 2) would print 2, 3. midNumbers(1, 10, 4) would print 4, 5, 6, 7. This question was left very vague and I think it was intentionally left up to the interviewee to clarify as much as possible. Follow-ups included:

• How would you check for appropriate input?
• How would you protect against attacks, such as a buffer overflow attack?
• What are some cases that you would test to check that the method is working correctly?

How would you convert a row number on Excel to a label? Rows are labeled alphabetically, with letters added on once the alphabet has been fully used. For instance, row # 5 is labeled E, row # 27 is labeled AA, row # 28 is AB, and row # 53 is BA. What would the row label be for a large number, such as 1500?