Had one short interview on campus, then after 3 months got a phone call for the interview on phone plus had to fill out a pretty boring/long form asking me about my interesting projects etc.
First interview was easy; mostly HR stuff, then they sent me a online test, two questions first was to implement FIFO using LIFO second was on the lines of selecting random nodes from a tree. 2nd question was pretty tough. But I did both of them in 1 hour, compiled and send them the working code.
Then they called up for a technical interview asking following questions
-How would you test an application that takes 3 inputs and draws a triangle? (black box testing)
-Write a data structure class that works as both a Stack and a Queue. Write test cases for them.
-Write code to reverse a linked list. Write test cases.
-Write code to merge-sort 2 linked lists (no duplicates). Write test cases.
-Write code to delete all nodes in a linked list that contain integer values that are odd numbers. Write test cases.
-Write code to delete alternate nodes in a doubly linked list. Write test cases.
- Given "ABC/EF" where do you place values G, H, and I. (pattern matching puzzle).
-How will you write a function to merge two sorted arrays assuming one of them have enough space to hold all the members.
After this they called me up to MS’s EU headquarters in Ireland, pretty basic interview, back to back 5 interviews, all pretty easy, asking questions about C++ internals, pointers and few simple algorithms, search a list, sort an array, overloading etc.
After this (i.e. after about 10 interviews in total and 1 coding test) they precede with an offer the next day, which was sadly only €30K amazingly a very low offer from such a big company. I discussed with the Microsoft’s HR abut the growth prospects what will be my pay after 1 year and then 2 year, turned out its pretty basic, 36-37K after first year and 40-42K after 2nd. I also applied at Accenture; they offered 42K + benefits straight away. So I can’t believe it, but I had to ditch Microsoft and join Accenture. In the end I felt that Microsoft wasted so much of my time, not worth apply a job here. My advice is if you are smart and can make it, join Google. Otherwise go for the money, there is no prestige in working for MS anymore.
