I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) in Feb 2018
Interview
I was initially contacted by recruiter over LinkedIn with generic message on 21st November. I replied on 22nd and sent hime my resume. The recruiter disappeared. When I pinged him again on December 6th, he replied and we had a phone conversation. He told me that he will forward my resume to hiring managers in Azure. He then disappeared again for 2 weeks. When I pinged him again just after christmas, he said he will get back to me again. He again disappeared and finally replied on 10th January that couple of teams in Azure are interested. He asked me send him over time slots for phone screening. I did and then it was radio silence again. In first week of february, recruiter told me to send my new availabilities for phone screenign. I did again. Finally my phone screen was set.
The phone screen was held using Skype for business, which does not have client for Ubuntu. So I managed to get hold of a mac for interview. The interviewer also did not know how to use the Skype for business. He asked me some design questions. At the end when I asked interviewer about when I should expect to hear from recruiter, he said "Your guess is as good as mine". When I told him about the long process I have been part of, he promised to expedite the process. And sure enough after 3 days I learned that I have cleared the phone screening.
But recruiter called me and told me that I should not have complained about the long time for me to get phone screening and it looks bad for me and I should refrain from mentioning this again in on-site interview. It has been a week, but my onsite has not been scheduled, despite me telling the recruiter that I have other interviews lined up. It doesn't matter, as I am not going on on-site interview anyway.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Explain Lambda and Kappa patterns for big data pipelines
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA) in Jun 2015
Interview
Usual rather simple programming questions pretty standard that are in every book. Nothing to add as learn data structures and how to apply them to variety of issues, computer architecture, OS specific things, some networking would help. Many groups value Linux experience a lot since it is trend to move to cloud which has lots of Linux inside
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Seattle, WA)
Interview
I needed to go to Seattle to a friend of mine, so I applied online for a Senior Engineer, Android role. At the time I was unfamiliar with Microsoft ranks, so I didn't realize that I was grossly underqualified for Senior SDE with only 2.5 years industry experience. Luckily they must've realized this and adjusted my application for an SDE II role.
The onsite process was excellent. I would say better Google, who makes you book your own flight. Probably second only to Facebook because they included an excellent breakfast buffet at the hotel I went to. The hotel I got was decent, but the breakfasts contained no meats, which was disappointing. I managed to wrangle the flight times to give me an extra couple of days, and they gave me 2 nights in the hotel and 4! days with the car, which was perfect. Highly recommend.
Interview itself was really fun. Microsoft's hiring process is a lot more granular than other Big N companies, because you apply for a specific team and that's the team who interviews you. In this way, it's more important to impress on a social level, because the hiring folks will be working with you directly.
My interviews were more design and theory focused than normal, but that's not necessarily typical. One thing that stood out to me was that "lunch", was actually the third interview. This really tripped me out because normally you eat lunch with a neutral guy, so I was chatting with my guy and afterwards he's like, okay lets go to my office and do some problems. They pay for your lunch, but be sure not to get the pizzas or grill stuff, because it takes way too long. Get a soup, some bread, and look for cues in the eating pace of your interviewer. Also, this way you wont eat too much and get sleepy.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What's the relation between a process and an application in Android? Followed by discussions on interprocess communications (IPC) in Android.