To be honest the whole process was quite disappointing from all points of view. I have never had a call with a recruiter to discuss the position, I was not informed at all about the process and next steps. It took 8 months to receive an offer. Recruiters would contact me via email every 3-4 weeks to urgently schedule the next interview within the next 3-5 days. They wouldn't tell me what the interview was about. After each interview, I wouldn't receive any feedback during 3-4 weeks again. I did 6 interviews, in this order: 3 coding, 1 SQL, 1 system design, 1 culture fit. Interviewers were mostly nice (apart for one checking his phone and arriving 15min late) and problems were leetcode medium. The SQL interview didn't go well, since I wasn't prepared at all and not expecting it. The diversity of interviewers was very low (they were all 40 years old male principal engineering managers). Plus I had to do several interviews at 8-9PM because they were in the USA. After this super painful and long process, I've received an insultingly low offer. After several years (6+) of FAANG experience and a solid interview in system design, I would have never expected to be offered a junior position. I don't think I'll apply again at Microsoft any time soon.

It started with a 90-minute online assessment, followed by a technical phone screen with one engineer. The OA covered two medium-to-hard algorithm problems. For coding practice, I mainly rely on "LeetCode" to cover different topics. For company-specific interview preparation, I use "Hack2Hire", "LeetCode Discuss", and "1Point3Acres" to find any recent original questions. All of them are helpful platforms. The phone screen included one coding problem and some discussion around edge cases and time complexity.