I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Pequim, Pequim) in Feb 2026
Interview
I recently completed a first-round screening that was, frankly, a masterclass in how not to treat candidates. Despite being selected for my background in Data Science and AI, the experience was a total disconnect:
Lack of Basic Courtesy: The interviewer remained camera-off for the entire duration while expecting me to be fully engaged.
Total Role Misalignment: Not a single question was asked regarding my resume, ML/Stats knowledge, or previous projects. It became clear the interviewer had no interest in my background. Have no idea why they elected me then...
Argumentative, Not Evaluative: When asked about my strengths, my answers were met with direct arguments rather than professional follow-ups. We went back and forth for like five rounds. Well, he seems to dislike my strengths.
Technical Chaos: Despite providing a HackerRank link, I was told to code in a local IDE based on verbal instructions alone, making the process unnecessarily prone to miscommunication.
It’s disappointing to see a company show such a lack of respect for a candidate's time and expertise.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. What is your advantages and disadvantages for this position?
2. How you calculated the GPU memory for the 4B qwen model?
3. How does LoRA work in optimization? Specifically, GPU-level
4. Coding: Sum two float type string.
The interview process started with a short 30-minute introductory interview, where we mainly discussed my previous experience, background, and motivation for the role. After that, I had three interviews in one day. One interview focused more on my previous projects and experience, while the other two were more technical and focused on machine learning theory, practical ML problem-solving, and model selection. The interviewers were very nice, professional, and the atmosphere was comfortable throughout the process.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Describe how you would build a model that recognizes whether a person is wearing glasses in a photo.
Two rounds of interview, both technical, in both rounds I was asked about my projects and very deep insights related to those, also the questions were very practical based ml questions, i was asked to do live coding also in both the rounds
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft in Mar 2026
Interview
3 interviews. One ML breadth mostly focused on Transformers. What are hallucinations, and how to avoid them, what is catastrophic forgetting, and similar questions. Another manager round with some HR questions, like sharing past learning experiences, was also asked about an open-ended ML system design for next-word prediction in an app. Third was the coding round, where they asked me to find an accurate threshold for classifying using a really bad classifier. The answer should be the F1 score, and I was supposed to code it up live.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What are hallucinations, and how to avoid them, what is catastrophic forgetting, and similar questions. Another manager round with some HR questions, like sharing past learning experiences, was also asked about an open-ended ML system design for next-word prediction in an app. Third was the coding round, where they asked me to find an accurate threshold for classifying using a really bad classifier. The answer should be the F1 score, and I was supposed to code it up live.
