Microsoft IDC Interview Experience | Set 68 (For SDE)

Hi, Following is my interview experience for SDE position in Bing Team.

– Online Round :
      Total questions 2.

1. The question was big, like a story but it ultimately boils down to Longest Common Subsequence.

2. Don’t remember the question but it was a mix of level order traversal + searching.

– Onsite : Round 1 : Duration around 1 hour

1. Given a binary tree, connect all node in the same level. Node structure is : left, right, data, next. Each level next should point to the next right node in the level. For last node in each level, next should be NULL

   • Then, the question was extended : Toggle the linking every K level. Means, you will be given a tree root node and a number K. For first K level, you should link to next right node. Next K you should link to next left and so on.
2. Given a city containing n people, a mayor candidate is one who does not like anybody but everybody else likes him. You are given a function Likes(x,y), where x and y are people in the city.
   • Likes(x,y) = 1 if x likes y, O otherwise.
   • Question was to find the mayor candidate. O(n) solution was required.
3. Some discussion on app based taxi booking services, overall idea about how they are implemented, how it can be improved. Just general idea.

– Onsite : Round 2 :

1. Discussion about MTech project, previous work, my contribution etc.
2. What could you have done better in the last round?
3. How can you transfer a binary tree from one machine to another. How will you dump it efficiently in a file. How you will encode and decode it. Long discussion of different approaches.
4. Designing a parking lot system, how will you design the databases etc.
5. Reverse every alternate quarter of a linked list. For example, if the list has 12 nodes, then 1-2-3, 7-8-9 should be reversed, rest remains same. Code with all edge cases checked requited. Test cases for the same.

– Onsite : Round 3:

1. Discussion about previous work. Challenges faced.

2. Given a 2 D array of size mxn (say) and a location (i,j), write a function TraverseSpiral(arr,m,n, i, j) which will traverse the array spirally starting from location and moving clockwise.
   Working code with edge cases checked required.
   Test cases for the same
3. Stream of words are coming : ate, geek, tea, for, sam, eat. Build a data structure to store these such that, if a query was made to search a word: sat tea, it should return all the anagrams : tea, ate, eat present in the store. Long discussion on possible approaches.

– Onsite Round 4: With Bing team GM

1. Long discussion about dissertation, previous work. With stress given to contribution and challenges faced and how did I decided to resolve them
2. Why do I want to leave present company?
3. Some discussion about UI, what are the things to keep in mind while designing a mobile APP like amazon or flipkart. Which is better among them. What would you Iike to do to make them more user friendly.
4. Some discussion about multi thread system and synchronisation among them. Various approaches and their trade-off discussed.
5. High level discussion on how India Railway reservation system works catering to millions of request at a time.
6. Any questions from my side – I asked various aspects of work being done in Bing team. I emphasised on scenarios where a bing search gives more relevant results than a google search.

Overall, it was a great experience. Great food and snacks throughout the day. The interviewers were friendly, giving hints and all. I would also like to thank geeksforgeeks for being there always. I have been greatly benefited hence I am taking time in sharing a detailed and thorough description of the process from my perspective.

All Practice Problems for Microsoft !