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Software Development Engineer Interview Experience

August 1, 2014
Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

The recruiter had a quick chat with me before arranging a technical interview to evaluate my problem-solving, algorithms, and programming skills. The technical interview was conducted over the phone and using CollabEdit. I was given a programming problem to solve in the language of my choice and used JavaScript to write the solution. The interviewer pointed out the need for optimization and provided some hints. I quickly figured out a fairly optimized code.

The interviewer didn't sound too impressed with my performance. As the problem was fairly simple, he probably expected me to write perfectly optimized code on the first try. In my opinion, I exhibited the ability to discuss and think through solutions rather than being well-versed in solving a certain class of problems.

There is no telling what works.

Questions

Nothing unexpected or particularly difficult. What is really hard is that the transparency is one-way. You give your answers, and you will never get to know what the interviewer was expecting to hear.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 634 interview experiences for the Microsoft Software Development Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

29%
Pass Rate

Microsoft's interview process for their Software Development Engineer roles in the United States is very selective, failing most engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive57%
Neutral32%
Negative11%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Microsoft's Software Development Engineer interview process in United States.

Microsoft Work Experiences