My Experience with Microsoft Interview (Part 2)

Now I'll write the second part with my journey through Microsoft Interview :)

Third interview:

My third interview was somehow more complex than the first two, I had it with a product manager in XML team (I think she was the manager of the XML as a whole), she asked me if I know any thing about SQL Server of course I answered no (Even I knew it well :P ), just to give myself the chance if she asked in any thing in SQL Server in which is don't know, any way, I don't remember the exact interview, but it was about how could I implement the SELECT statement between two tables if I was supposed to implement the SQL Server myself, all what I've is just a pointers to the two tables, she gave me the tables internal data structure, so I gave here an O(n ^ 2) (as usual), she told me she want it to be less than this, I gave here another solution of O(n log n), after that she asked about the O(n) solution and I gave it to her, then she asked me what if I found a duplicated rows, and she needs me to specify a way in which (if needed) will remove the duplications, I gave her the solution, she told me Iam so fine till now, and she still needs one more step, she asked me, if we've the two tables of huge size (lets say more than 1000,000,000 record each), it wont be wise to return the final result of the SELECT statement immediately, so we want a way to give the user the chance to get n results at first and then if he want more he'll get more (to implement the next function if you used SQL Server you'll know it), she asked me to do it in two ways, one way using hashtable and the other without it, I did that of the hash table, then I had given her a solution which is O(n) too without the use of hashtable, she smiled and told me that I had implemented the same technique used inside the last version of the SQL Server itself (it was an algorithm implemented by Microsoft itself and known by X merge sort, where X is some word I don't remember).

After that she told me that she finished interviewing me, and she had left with me to the main room again.

Forth interview:

After that they left us for about 10 minutes, and then came back and told us that 3 of us will leave and the other 2 will stay to some extra interviews and they will tell them the result of the interview after 2 weeks (the clue here, if you left in the middle of the interview, then you had lost your chance to be accepted), after that I had my forth interview, with some giant developer, who was interviewing me about my SDET abilities (SDET means Software Design Engineer in Test), so the question was very simple, Imagine you've 2D system which is just testing whether 2 rectangles are in collision state or not, and you supposed to make a program which takes the code of this system from its developers and test it automatically to see if it's working good or not, and output the percentage of the error in the code, what you'll do?

After making it, he then told me it's ok, fine, but you'll need some test cases to test the code on it, so you must have 2 group of test cases which must be generated automatically too, the first group is that group you know for sure that they collide, and the second one which you know for sure that they are not collide, so how you'll do this?

After telling him the rules for generating the test cases, he asked me what'll I do in the system if I've the time only for making 3 checks, what will be these checks?

I answered him, then he told me right, you got an answer, let's head now again for the main room to see what's next.

Fifth (and final) interview:

After that, it comes for the final interview, in which they had divided them-selves into 2 groups (3 each) and had taken us into an interview which was mainly about why you want to join Microsoft, and how you could imagine the way of working there, do you imagine if you joined you'll assigned a task in your first day or what?, and what if your manager assigned you a task you see it's soo trivial and easy, would you complain and say it's too easy and direct or you'll make it with internal un-satisfied or what?, and what you think the first thing you'll do when you put you feet there, would it be looking for food, or asking about where every thing is located or asking about your colleagues or what?
Many of questions like this, the most two questions I've enjoyed were:

Him: How many lines you could imagine the Visual Studio 2002 is?
Me: you mean the framework or the IDE or what?
Him: No, just the empty IDE, without any compilers, framework, debugger, any thing, just an empty IDE?
Me: how much?
Half a million?
Him (smiling): No, it's about 8,000,000 lines, Iam just telling you this to know how much the word Consistency means in our code, you may write a good and powerful code, but when included in main system will destroy it, and to clear this point for you, how much time could you imagine the line of code is surviving in our systems?

Me: How much?
4 years?

Him: No, it may reach more than 12 years, so it must be written in very good way, consistent, and good commented, and by saying the word comment, how could you think that your comments are good?

Me: mmm, I don't know, I think I should write them in a good way.

Him: and who will tell you that your way is good?

Me: It's easy, I've 2 ways, either to write them in a standardized way, or I should make a dummy function and they write a comment on it using my way, and send it to many developers with me and see if my way is good or not, and by the way, I knew that there must exist a standardized way in Microsoft for its code comments.

Then I left and they told me that I'll receive the results within a period of 2 weeks, and then it comes for the last stage:

The waiting for the results.

After that, I had a very nice time waiting for the ......

To be continued...........