The entire process was about three months long (November-January).

I applied online and heard back within a month for a phone screening. After moving on through the phone screening, I went to the onsite interview. This was a three-day process in January.

The first and last days were allotted for travel, and the second day was mainly for the interview. The three-day trip to Seattle was a very fun experience, but being at Microsoft for one day was not.

The onsite interview was an extremely grueling process; both the candidate and the interviewers were completely drained by the end. There were four interviews total, at about 45 minutes each, with a 10-minute break in between each one. After these interviews, a decision would be made about the offer in two weeks.

After having gone through many interviews for technical roles, I found Microsoft's process to need the most improvement. The employees interviewing seemed as though they disliked the job via their demeanor and answers to questions posed about work-life balance, as well as the average hours a Microsoft employee works per week.

Furthermore, Microsoft did not offer much in terms of "selling" their company to a future employee, as compared to other companies' candidacy processes. There was no tour throughout the campus, no Microsoft gear to take home, and no real connections to any of the current employees.

Overall, this process made it seem like Microsoft was a very demanding corporation that did not offer much for employees with a life outside of work, but the trip to Seattle was a fun experience.

How would you create a service to provide Microsoft updates to over a billion devices?