Status: 4 years professional, BS CS\nPosition: SDE2\nLocation: Seattle, WA\nDate: May 10, 2022\n\n**Initial Steps**\nI wanted to give Microsoft a shot, so I dug through my LinkedIn messages and responded to the latest Microsoft recruiter who reached out to me (1-2 months prior). I explained that I was looking for a full-time remote role. She said those were very rare, but had on-site roles. I was willing, so we went through a technical OA. It didn\'t go perfectly, but well enough to move me to the on-site. The next Hiring Day was May 10, so we scheduled for then. I live in Hawaii (-3 hours from PST). They were unwilling to change from a 9 AM PST interview time, so I had to settle for a 6 AM HST start.\n\n**On-site Preparation**\nWith on-sites for Google and Amazon approaching, I put in as much time outside of work and family as possible to Leetcode. I had a busy 1 week vacation during that month, so in reality I had 3 weeks to prepare). Prior to the process I had solved 200 LC questions (~100 easy, ~100 med). During the 3 weeks of preparation, I solved an additional ~60 (more mediums than easies). I did several practice video interviews with friends.\n\n**Virtual On-site**\nThe 6 AM start was *rough*, and I still scratch my head over why Microsoft was so rigid with this.\n\nRound 1: Technical + Behavioral\nSimilar to [LC 1047](https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-all-adjacent-duplicates-in-string/) Remove repeated neighboring values from an integer array.\nex: [1,2,2,2,10,3,3,9,9,1,1] -> [1,2,10,3,9,1]\nI was so excited for a very easy question. I got my 2 pointer approach ready and.... I couldn\'t function. It was way too early and it was a mess. The interviewer clearly was not going to give approval, and the last 20 minutes were a formality.\n\nRound 2: Technical + Behavioral\nConvert a hexadecimal string to a byte array.\nex: Given "DF0A123EA1", return [223, 10, 18, 62, 161]\nThis went well. Interviewer was nice and conversational.\n\nRound 3: Technical + Behavioral\n[LC 1429](https://leetcode.com/problems/first-unique-number/)\nThis took some conversation to understand, but I got to the correct solution. Interviewer was nice and conversational.\n\nRound 4: Technical + Behavioral\nScale a 2d array by a given factor.\nex:\nFactor=2\nArray=\n[[1, 7]\n[2, 3]]\n->\n[[1, 1, 7, 7]\n [1, 1, 7, 7]\n [2, 2, 3, 3]\n [2, 2, 3, 3]]\nI nailed this question, after a little debugging.\n\n**Conclusion**\nI thought I stood a chance to get an offer. If I had to rate my rounds, I\'d give them: 2/10, 7/10. 7/10, 9/10. However, the recruiter followed up in a few days saying that it was a reject. Ignoring the disastrous first round, I think I could\'ve done better on the behavioral portions. Otherwise, it went well.

Status: 4 years professional, BS CS\nPosition: SDE2\nLocation: Seattle, WA\nDate: May 10, 2022\n\nInitial Steps\nI wanted to give Microsoft a shot, so I dug thr