Hello to everyone at Leetcode Community. Having Interviewed with Microsoft and Google Recently, I wanted to share my Interview Experience with you all.

Microsoft (SDE2 L61) OFFER
Round 1 :

1. Hackerrank Test(30 minutes) : Given a string of digits, keep summing the digits and convert them to Hexadecimal. Repeat the same process till minimal hexadecimal Value is attained. (Validation of strings had to be done as well). Input 8981 Output B
   Eg. 8981 -> Sum=26 ->Hexa Value 1A->Sum=1+10=11->Hexa Value B (Answer)

Round 2: Onsite Algorithm Round

1. Search a word in a 2d Character matrix with traversel direction allowed as horizontal, vertical and diagonal. Similar to Word Search https://leetcode.com/problems/word-search/
2. Median of an infinte stream of numbers. Follow up : Median of two sorted sets in O(log(n)).

Round 3 : Problem Solving

1. Given a String with one type of brackets, validate if it is balanced or not.
   https://leetcode.com/problems/valid-parentheses/
2. Given a string with parentheses of three types with precedence, validate the balance status of the string. A higher precedence parentheses can enclose a lower precedence parentheses but not vice and versa.
3. Longest Valid Parentheses with precedence order given.
4. Minimum characters to remove to make a string a balanced parentheses.
   https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-remove-to-make-valid-parentheses/

Round 4 : This was like a bar raiser and required a lot of brain storming and help from the interviewer.

1. The question was similar to this question with a little alteration https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-path-in-a-grid-with-obstacles-elimination/

Round 5 : Design Round: Design a voting system with about 100M users who will use it in a space of 1 day distributed randomly across the world.(Assume a platform where NRI and Indian residents are allowed voting). Make all necassary assumptions and keep in mind the scale of the system.

Another Round had a question related Vehicular Live tracking and notifications based on certain events(Overspeeding,Breakdown etc).

Round 7: Hiring Manager Round with Software principles and culture fit round. (Do not take this round for granted, they filter based on this round too).

Google SDE 1

Round 1 : Given a dictionary of words, find if it is possible to reach from any given startword to an endword such that all transition words are present in the dictionary. You can transit from one word to another by adding a character anywhere or removing a character from anywhere.

Eg. {s,si,sing,sting,sin,staring,string,starling,stardom} startword : s, endword: starling Output: true 
s->si->sin->sing->sting->string->staring->starling

Round 2 :

1. Given English letters written in order in a grid with 9,9,8 characters and a string, find the minimum distance that your fingers must cover such that you are able to write all characters in the string. Note : You can choose any start position of both your fingers, aim is to minimise the distance.
   https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-distance-to-type-a-word-using-two-fingers/
2. Given an array of sets of characters, find the longest set that is an outlier(Outlier is a set which doesn't intersect with any other set). (You aren't allowed to use set.intersection obviously :p)

As a sidenote tip, the premium companies have a great level of questions that require constant coding practice. Leetcode has been a marvel community in the prep times and It is highly recommended to pierce through 80,60,40 of leetcode Easy,Medium and Hard Problems before you set aim for any Premium companies(Microsoft,Google,LinkedIn,Uber,Facebook). For Senior positions, a decent level of system knowledge plays a great role in accelarating an aspirant to an employee. It is a given that Leetcode premium is a blessing for each one trying to prepare for these roles.

All those willing to move out to newer companies have been given a blessing in disguise in form of the COVID19. Use the time wisely and Your time shall soon come. Happy Job Hunting :)

Edit: The overwhelming response on the post makes me glad for reaching out to people and help them in any possible ways. Many in comments have been asking about how to go about System Design preparations. Putting down some great blogs and repos that really helped me understand the key concepts of System Design. However it is really upto the interviewer and not entirely on your knowledge. I have seen people with ample experience in System scale fail at companies on questions that were bread and butter for them.

1. System Design Primer https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer
2. System Architecture http://aosabook.org/en/index.html
3. https://www.careercup.com/
4. "Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems" is a great book to help your cause.

As I said, there is no depth enough to explore the System design. You can know some principles and wish that the interviewer and you are alligned. If success is not attained in one go, Do not lose hope. There is always light at the end of the tunnel. May the Force be with You. GodSpeed!