A while ago, I was applying a job (Principal Software Engineer) for Microsoft, in Cambridge the Microsoft Research Center.

Principle Software Engineer level in Microsoft is a very decent, high level, which is more than L5 (Senior SWE) in Google and (SDE III, Senior SDE L6) in Amazon.

Big IT giants have their own Recruitment teams, and I was contacted by one of the Microsoft Recruiter. The first call was more-or-less a introductory call to know about each other and I was introduced the tasks that Microsoft do in Cambridge and the specific role. Two weeks later, comes the telephone interview.

It is in fact a coding interview where you need to be with a computer. You need to have the video camera set-up as in the interview, you and the interviewer can see each other and talk.

It is suggested that you test your connection, camera, microphone beforehand. And do use LAN as WIFI not stable, which was in my case. My interview was not smooth as it was very laggy probably due to the Wifi Connection.

The Interviewer, who was a principal software engineer lead in Microsoft for more than 20 years asks me a few easy questions at the beginning like: What is your favorite programming language and why? If you are to present a topic at the Annual Microsoft Developer Conference Build, what would you present, and use the online whiteboard (in the browser) to give a short introduction. My presentation title was: How to improve the communication speed between nodes in the blockchain?

From hardware, OS, API, applications, which technology stacks are you most comfortable with? and why? This question is designed to see how you fit to the Microsoft teams.

What was your last piece of software your ‘ve written? (not the piece of test-and-throw-away code). I mentioned my Chrome Extension to download the videos.

And also, what type of C++ programmer you describe yourself: A C++ programmer, a C programmer but uses C++ syntax etc. My answer is: I use C and the Modern C++ features such as STL containers.

The interview lasts for 45 minutes exactly (which is good). There is a coding exercise using the online coding collaborate tool (see below). The tasks are described here (seems easy). Be careful to unit tests your code and find edge cases. Remember to use Modern C++.

Like other interviews, I was given the chance to ask a few questions at the end of the interview. Overall, it was a pleasant interview experience!

–EOF (The Ultimate Computing & Technology Blog) —

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