Microsoft | SDE | Sunnyvale | July 2020 [Reject]
Status: 8 years of experience
Position: SDE at a networking company
Location: Sunnyvale, CA
Date: mid-July, 2020
The recruiter contacted me through LinkedIn and mentioned there is a hiring event for multiple roles. The recruiter was very transparent and proactive in the beginning, suggested that I schedule the interview as soon as possible since there are many candidates lined up. She wanted to make sure that I get a phone screen. I have been preparing for interviews for a while. I had done 290 problems in leetcode. So, I scheduled one without much delay.
Technical phone screen (1 hour):
I was asked two easy questions which I had done before. (One was a question I used to ask as an interviewer). Clarified with the interviewer whether a running a code with test cases is the expectation.
- Check if the input string which has (, {, [ is balanced or not.
- Implement atoi - Given a string, convert to an integer.
Solved the first question and wrote test cases, compiled the program and ran and showed that the test cases passed. The interviewer paid attention till now. Then the second question was asked and while I was writing the code, the interviewer got up and started doing some kitchen chores. I could hear the vessels in the background a lot and could tell that the interviewer was paying zero attention to what I was saying. It got worse when this person turned on a blender/mixer that was too loud that I couldn't hear myself talking. The interviewer muted their mic after a minute of this loud grinding sound and didn't ask any followup/clarification in the code I was writing. I was very disappointed espically because I had solved the two problems and ran test cases.
The second I hung up with the interviewer, the recuiter called me to check how the interview went and said will be in touch. I was still very shocked because of the interview and I couldn't make up my mind about mentioning this horrible experience and how to put it into words that doesn't sound like whining. Besides since I solved the problems, I thought I shouldn't hurt my chances of getting to the next round by saying something. I didn't hear from the recruiter for two weeks and got a plain "reject" in an email after followup emails.
I am sorry about the rant above but I felt like I had a good chance with this opportunity and it's blown away.
Good luck to everyone who interviews with Microsoft.
Result: Reject