I was amazed how fast Microsoft managed to run my hiring process. I had already received another offer from a high-value company, and before signing there, I thought I'd try my luck with Microsoft.

Knowing this, HR called me the day after I submitted my CV. She scheduled three back-to-back interviews for the following day, all within a four-hour timeframe.

The interviews were well-organized. I felt very welcome, even though they were remote interviews via Teams with team leaders from Redmond, USA.

• The first interview was about getting to know me, discussing technologies I'd worked with, my thoughts on each, and my experience.
• The second interview involved presenting some of my past work in the first part. In the second part, I was asked to design a system at a high level, covering networking, security, proxies, VPNs, on-premises, and cloud aspects.
• The third interview was a coding question. I had to solve an algorithm problem related to stacks and queues. It seemed easy on the first read, but I luckily found a catch in the middle, making it harder than I initially thought, though I still managed to solve it.

I received a call the next day letting me know we were moving towards an offer.

I got the offer letter the same day. The salary and benefits were well above my demands.

I was given a week to decide.

• Design a system, at a high level, covering networking, security, proxy, VPN, on-prem, and cloud.

• Coding question: Solve an algorithm question on the subject of stacks and queues.