Microsoft SSE | 2026 | Rejected
- Experience
- 7 years
- Posted
- 16 Mar 2026
Summary
I interviewed for a Senior Software Engineer role at Microsoft and was rejected after struggling with a complex Tic-Tac-Toe sequence counting problem in the phone screen. Despite preparing with LeetCode's Microsoft tagged questions, I found the problem challenging and reflected on my preparation strategy.
How it went
Got approached by recruiter. I have 7 yoe. Did OA OA consisted of 2 problems. One was DP (Similar to jump game) and Another one was LC Hard (Similar to Reroot DP problems). 80% of the test cases passed.
Went for the Phone screen round online and got this problem which I've never solved before.
Questions asked (1)
- 01
Tic-Tac-Toe Total Game Sequences
Data Structures & Algorithms · Hard
2 players A and B are playing tic-tac-toe
What is the total count moves in which a game ends.
Number of distinct games (sequence of moves)
This includes:
early wins
draws
all legal move orders (alternate moves)
How they prepared
I have solved most of the Microsoft tagged questions from leetcode but still couldn't come up with a solution like this during the interview. Seems like expectation is really high or maybe I am doing something wrong with my preparation.