Applied for a SWE2 role on LinkedIn and was invited to a Microsoft Hiring event (They usually happen on Saturdays)
Round 1: [Group question - 45 mins - Paper]
Around 8 of us in an conference were given a Printed Question and A4 sheets to answer our question:
Given two Stacks, find if they are equal (length and order of elements), given the following conditions
- No additional stacks, lists,etc
- No recursion
- Additional variables permitted
- When the function exits, the ORDER of the elements in two stacks should be preserved.
- Only Stack methods to be used - Push, Pop
My answer: Accomplished everything except the recursion condition.
I noticed this question flummoxed everyone, and it was very strange/odd that Microsoft would give an un-solvable question... I strongly feel that such a question shouldn't have come up there...
Round 2: [Data Structures and Algorithms]
Panel of two interviewers asked me questions on Linked Lists:
- https://leetcode.com/problems/reorder-list/
- https://leetcode.com/problems/linked-list-random-node/
- GIven three boxes of balls, all with mismatched labels. One box contains only green balls, one contains only red balls, and one contains a mix of two of them, find least number of picks to identify labels for the boxes.
Turns out people were asked to leave after each round. I was asked to leave after round 2 (I read about some 5% screening tactic at MSFT, I think this was it)