Microsoft | SDE2 | Bangalore | Interview experience | Online Assessment [Reject]
Summary
I recently interviewed for an SDE2 position at Microsoft in Bangalore and was unfortunately rejected after the online assessment. The assessment comprised two challenging algorithmic problems.
Full Experience
I secured an interview opportunity with Microsoft for an SDE2 role through an HR contact on LinkedIn. After the initial call, I received a Codility test link, which I took on January 5, 2022. The online assessment was 60 minutes long and presented two distinct coding challenges. Despite my efforts, I did not pass this round and received a rejection.
Interview Questions (2)
The first question involved a cleaning robot in a room. My task was to implement logic for the robot to clean all accessible cells in a grid. This problem was similar in concept to LeetCode's Robot Room Cleaner (a premium problem), and its detailed description can also be found here.
The second question was about transforming a given array A of N integers, which was sorted in non-decreasing order. The goal was to reach a state where every value X present in the array occurs exactly X times. I could perform two types of moves: removing an integer or inserting an integer anywhere. This problem shares similarities with problems like Non-decreasing Array and Minimum Moves to Equal Array Elements II.