My role got terminated in July due to COVID situation. But I was confident that I will get a job in some company not FAANG or Microsoft.
It was a tough situation for me as I am on H1B and had a grace of 60 days, else needed to file for H4. Somehow my grace got over(market is really tough now due to COVID) and had to file for H4(still in progress). But I did not loose hope, I kept on applying on Linkedln ,contacting recruiters directly(have Linkedln premium), using contacts, attending events.
I got a call from Microsoft recruiter in september 3rd week, answered the Online test and was invited for a virtual interview within 2 weeks.
Online test consisted of 3 Coding task to be solved in 60 mins. Consisted of easy, medium and medium less hard problem on Codility.
Virtual interview consisted of 4 interview rounds. All the 4 rounds do have coding but in my case only 2 rounds had coding. All the rounds ask a lot of behavioral , design questions(or may be because I have 10+ exp I was asked). Pay attention to what interviewer is asking, like in one of my coding question interviewer focused on various edge cases and solution for it.
Overall my experience was GOOD.
I got the result with a week and I am being offered L62(due to my exp). Salary is between 110k to 150k, also based on your exp and the interview. Still waiting for the offer letter rolled out. But VERY HAPPY to make it here.
Leetcode really helped me. I tried solving most of the questions from the Microsoft compilation. But most importantly I explored the tutorials like Arrays, Linked List, Binary Search, BST again. I also read Cracking the coding interview sometime in April, so that even helped.
Design Questions - I have signed NDA, so wont specify exact questions. Questions are mostly arount Distributed Systems, Communication, Your Experience
Hope my POST encourages people like me and helps them in preparation. Best Wishes.
Thank You.
---------------Update----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry for not replying to many of the comments. Its been a hectic year. I joined Microsoft year back as mentioned. So please dont get disheartened by any comments of offers not being made. Each case is different.
Also I see lots of comments regarding salary, so for me from the background which I come from, Annual Bonus, Stocks, Signing bonus are variable pays. I consider base as my fixed pay which also depends on your experience and location. So have just mentioned the base pay range, hope that helps.
I also see lots of questions around interview questions - Signed NDA so cant disclose. But Leetcode Microsoft compilation is a great help.
Location - Atlanta, GA