Everything about Microsoft's interview process is great!

Start: Apply on website, on-campus, or through a recruiter.

First: Phone screen or on-campus interview (EASY).

Second: Fly out to Seattle for full-day interviews (MEDIUM).

End: You usually get a few weeks to reply to the offer; I got a month.

They usually don't tell you what team you'll be interviewing for, but it doesn't matter. They don't ask you anything specific about the team anyway.

Almost everything in the Seattle trip is covered, including room service, rental car, meals, etc. They really treat their candidates well. The interviews take a few hours (four rounds of 45-50 minute interviews on a whiteboard at their office) and range from medium to hard difficulty. They don't tell you too much about the company, offer, or process from the get-go, but are very friendly and respond to any questions you have quickly.

I would highly recommend going through this process, especially if you have a negative impression of Microsoft. The 'evil' rumors simply aren't true, and the company is great. Their compensation package is top-notch and would easily match Google, Facebook, etc. The disposable income you get is probably more than you'd get anywhere else, given that Washington has 0% state income tax and the living expenses in Seattle are reasonable.

Write a function that takes an integer array and removes duplicates from it (EASY).

Follow up: Now optimize it, trying to minimize CPI (HARD).

(Note: You need knowledge of branch prediction, loop unrolling, and other computer architecture concepts for this part.)