Background : I have been preparing for tech interviews at FAANG companies since 2020. I have been interviewing since December 2020. This post has my recent experience with Microsoft & Tesla. I will be creating another post with all my interview experiences clubbed together. I have done 400+ problems on leetcode. 100 easy/250 medium/60 hard.
MICROSOFT | REMOTE | SSE | JAN 2022
Phone Screen : This was in the last week of Nov 2021. Lots of Behavioral questions for the first 30 minutes. Then the coding problem asked was 1. Word Break. Was able to solve this with all test cases. After a couple of days recruiter said that the team wanted to schedule the virtual onsite. Because of the holiday season it was scheduled for Jan 2022.
Virtual Onsite:
Round 1 : Lots of behavioral questions for the first 30-35 minutes. Then asked to design a platform similar to leetcode. I was able to give the basic design in the 20-25 minutes remaining. I would rate this round as OK, since could not read the interviewers mind if he was satisfied with the design or not.
Round 2 : Behavioral questions for the first 10 minutes. Then coding question -
- Find First and Last position of element in sorted array.
I completed the code, however the interviewer said this is not the right code. I asked to run the test cases because i was sure of the code, however the interviewer said leave the code and asked a design question -
Design Twitter.
I was able to discuss the design of twitter - push v pull model etc. After this about 7-8 minutes were remaining. The interviewer asked me if I had any questions. I asked if I could complete my code for the coding question. The interviewer gave me 3 minutes to code it up, so i recoded it in another way and ran all test cases. All test cases passed. The interviewer gave some more test cases - all of them also passed. The interview went 1 minute over the time but the twitter design was complete and the coding question was complete. Based on this I would say this round was GOOD, however the interviewer was wrong when I coded the question the first time. Anyway,
Round 3 : Behavioral questions for the first 20 minutes. Then coding question - - Letter combinations of a phone number
I was able to code this up. The interviewer said no need to run the test cases and was satisifed with the code. I asked some questions about team etc. This round ended 7 minutes early. I would say this round was GOOD.
Round 4 - This was the HM round. Behavioral questions for the first 35 minutes. Then was asked to code - Inorder traversal of binary tree - Both recursive and iterative.
- Postorder traversal of binary tree - Both recursive and iterative.
I was able to code both questions completely recursively and iteratively. Then 2 minutes were remaining he asked basic design of API Rate Limiter. I was able to give that quickly. This round went 3-4 minutes over the time limit. But this round was also GOOD.
Waiting to hear back from recruiter. Keeping fingers crossed that I will get the offer. Even If I consider the first round as bad the other 3 were good so not sure what the criteria is, but the suspense is killing me.
TESLA | AUSTIN | P3 | JAN 2022
Online Assessment - I scored 100% on this. Recruiter emailed and said there will now be a phone screen. This was scheduled for 2 weeks later in Nov 2021.
Phone Screen - Was asked to go through and explain all the code in the online assessment. Then asked to code -
- Decode Ways.
Was able to code this up and pass all test cases. Recruiter called back next day saying the feedback was solid and would like to schedule a virtual loop. Again due to the holiday season this was scheduled for Jan 2022 - next day after my Microsoft interview.
Virtual Onsite.
Round 1 - This round was completely behavioral round. No technical questions - general resume discussion.
Round 2 - Was asked 2 coding questions -
- Reverse words in a string
- Palindrome Permutation
Completed both in total 20 minutes with all test cases passing. Then he said since we have time he wanted to test some SQL knowledge. This was a surprise since I was not expecting this. He showed a table schema and asked to write some basic queries involving Joins and groupby etc. Was able to do that. After this still 10 minutes were remaining. So he asked to design a US flag using CSS and HTML. This threw me off and since I am a backend developer I said I wouldn't know how to do that.
Round 3 - Coding Question
- Palindrome Linked List. Was able to code this with all test cases passing. There was still time remaining, so was asked some SQL queries again. I was able to write 2 of the 3 asked. Ran out of time while thinking about the third. But the queries asked in this round were harder using specific functions in SQL. Dont know why they were focusing on SQL so much.
Round 4 - Top K Frequent Words. Solved it using nlogn algorithm. Passed all test cases. Then follow up was to write a nlogk algorithm. Was able to code that up as well and pass all test cases.
Now waiting to hear back from recruiter. Keeping fingers crossed for one of them to come through.
UPDATE : Tesla Offer Details are available here : https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/1703318/Tesla-or-P3-or-Austin
UPDATE : Microsoft offer details are available here : https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/1727408/Microsoft-or-L62-or-Remote