Friday, February 4, 2011

Microsoft interview continued ...Part 2

Day 1 :
Today is 18th Jan'11.After a long wait MS was finally coming to NIT Durgapur.PPT was scheduled at 1 pm with few glitches.We all were asked to be in formals ,So I started from room in the same attire.We were waiting for the ppt and they announced that they will be first conducting the written exam and it will be forwarded by PPT and then the interviews.This seemed to be a multithreading operation to me .The parent thread MS panel ,created a new thread called "Paper correction team" just after the written test:).

Round 1:Written examination
IMHO this was conducted by merit trac wing of MSIT.This had 11 questions :
Qn1->how will you sort array of numbers(logic and dry run only)
Qn2->In a given string print the character occuring maximum number of times.
Qn3->A question on void pointer's output and typecasting.
2 testing question,1 troubleshooting question,2 question on OS(1 on disk seek time and latency) other was on uptime etc.,2 puzzles,1 design question(spacecraft).
Test streched for 1 and half hr(so far i remember).I did fairly well.

Round 1a:Preplacement talk
Guys I tell you ,It's Microsoft IT (Aukaad wali).PPT was boring at the beginning and picked up in midway.I didn't like the business and division part but rest was fun.The perks were impressive and few lines acted as a motivating touch.One of them I remember "We have hackers working day and night monitoring our systems so that none of our offsprings msn.com,hotmail.com and bing.com suffers from any sort of malicious attack.Coz once they are successful this will be the headline of the next day's newspaper".Next was "We go to orphanage and schools to teach poor children ,we believe in giving back to society."etc.This way I was highly impressed by the company to go ahead and ATTACK :):).

Round 2:Designing round
They asked us to fill our choices between SDE,SDET,SME posts.We all filled down the forms and I was shortlisted for SDE/SDET post.The designation was uncertain now.They shortlisted around 18 people for the interviews for FTE's(Full time engineers).I was called in the last room :) of our gd/pi rooms.There I was asked to design an ATM machine,integrate the SDLC with this.All the phases of designing including database part,coding and front end.I like this the most and I proceeded with my idea.I had frequent interactions with the interviewer and he was a sort of impressed.I was pushed to the next round.Interviews were over for the day.I was asked to report next day at 9:30 am.

Round 3:Coding round
I was waiting and waiting and waiting.It was around 2 pm ,I was sick tired of it and then they called me.This was the worst part.But now I enjoy thinking :).I was asked what are the questions you have come across as you have been waiting for so long.The interviewer was a dude:).I liked him but believe me I am straight:):).I told them all the questions which my fellow interviewee got struck so that he is impressed with my honesty.As I had already prepared those questions so I was gutsy to speak those questions.:) He replied I won't be asking you all that.So don't worry:).Then he started typing my name on his keyboard.I enquired are you googling my name.He replied I have bing and turned the laptop towards me adding that I ws preparing a feedback form for you anyways let's open BING.He asked me check '/' division operator.I wrote around 54 cases of a/b form and he told nikhil are you missing something that those were actually 108 test cases total :).He asked tell me what happens inside recursion,what are saved in stack etc..After this he asked me write simple codes Q>Sum the numbers upto n (given). He asked me to write test cases,solve the overflow situation and many pros,cons and alternatives of my code.Q>Write the code for depth of the tree and test it.He asked me write it fast and I did that .

Round 4:Coding and Final round with the Senior most interviewer
I was called early in this interview may be the Round 3 interviewer gave a positive feedback about me,which accelerated my interview.He started with "Tell me about yourself".He didn't express how far he liked my answer.They he started asking code for LCA of Binary tree ,I wrote it, Q>Two linked list merge at a point in Y shape don't have both the arms equal how will you find the point of intersection and other coding and algorithmic questions.He asked puzzles to my fellow interviewees to but he didn't ask me any.Then he moved on to the final Q>Take a mobile keypad,each key maps to some characters eg. 1->abc 2->def etc. So if a 10 digit number is given how will you find all permutations.How many permutations will be generated,you would prefer iteration or recursion and many questions related to that.The answer stucked me there itself and I explained him ,he seemed to be impressed.Then he asked me ask some questions(SDET and SDE fear) ,any improvements you suggest.I told few and I was moreover sure that I will crack it :).I came out with full energy and priyanka and everyone waiting outside could understand my interview was good.One more thing about this interview I would like to add is a story with my CV.I made a CV for Microsoft specially and nobody even had a look at it.I thought my effort will go in vain.Then I asked him to please see my CV,he was not interested but I convinced and then he took a copy of my CV and I was satisfied.

This ends the interviews.Result was declared(2SDE+1SME+1 intern(SME)) ,I was in :) but it was very difficult to wait for that.I couldn't take my dinner properly.It was Wednesday also :(.Still it was fun.

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