The process took 3 months. I interviewed at Microsoft (Dublin, Dublin) in Feb 2022
Interview
There was a a couple hour code test, 3 back to back technical/behavioral interviews, 1 dev manager interview, 1 team dev manager interview, 2-3 recruiter offer negotiation discussions.
I was told up until the offer that I was applying for Senior but then they offer me SDE2. While the total compensation (stock/car allowance) and sign on bonus was a little more than what I am making, the base was over 20% less than what I am currently making. This results in a golden handcuffs (can’t go elsewhere). When I asked about promotion, there was not clear path for career development to senior.
Feedback to recruitment: be up front to candidates where they fit during the interview process and make your base salaries more competitive with the market. Also reduce the interview duration. It took over 4 months to finish the interview process.
HR screening, one technical interview with the hiring manager then three interview loop which covered two system design and one dsa round.
System design was intensive and challenging.
It took them 5 weeks to come back with an offer. Background check was completed in a week, got joining date after 3 days.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Design a system for a startup company that let users post various types of content and get a unique url which can be shared with others to access the content
I applied online. I interviewed at Microsoft (Bengaluru) in Jun 2026
Interview
I got call via microsoft HR. She informed there will be 4 rounds of technical interviews all eliminator. Round 1 interview was a mid level graph question. The interviewer was actively involved, understood my logic, approach, challneged my assumeptions, did a dryrun at end, good experience. Round 2 inteviewer was extremely lazy and passive. It was a bad experience. He gave a problem statement of sliding window and disappeared. Wasn't intrested in hearing approach or even reading code. He came after 30 minutes , did a dry run and final output wasn't exactly correct. I identified a logical bug and started correcting it. He said there is no need , just finished the interview after that. The code i had written was optimal code but he didn't care to read that also. And there was still 20 minutes left. It gave me impression that interviewer in not at all interested in taking interview and they have been pushed my management. HR called next day to say i am not selected.
