This was a "hiring event" where 10 people were flown in together. They met the coordinators as a group, then were each given their own room.

Each candidate was interviewed by 4 Microsoft employees for 45 minutes per interview. There was a 15-minute break between interviews.

The interviews were a combination of questions about their background and resume, and a technical question involving coding and problem-solving. At the end, there were 5 minutes to ask about the job, but not a lot of detail was given.

Solve the readers/writers problem.

Do it without semaphores.

Back up 3 large tables where records in one table reference records in the other two, while adds, deletes, and updates are going on.

No SQL DB, no referential integrity, no locking.