
Ask HN: Interview with Microsoft tomorrow, how to prepare best? - showsover
This will be my first ever interview with a big company, even though I have almost 7 years of experience as a developer. This means that my experience with interviews is pretty down-to-earth, talking about what I&#x27;ve done in previous jobs and where my focus lies.<p>I switched to C# development last year, before I did PHP, JS, and ERP (Dynamics AX) development. This means that my professional experience is limited, even though I&#x27;ve done some after-hours C# development for a little less than two years.<p>Even though I haven&#x27;t yet had a &quot;big&quot; interview, I am currently studying for a masters in CS which means that my knowledge of CS theory should be OK. The biggest problem is that I don&#x27;t know what kind of interview this will be and how I should prepare best.<p>Any advice is much appreciated.
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DoreenMichele
Do your best to have a relaxing, low stress day today. Do your best to get a
good night's sleep tonight.

Last minute cramming won't make you more prepared. It will just stress you
out.

Nothing wrong with posting this question and reading any answers you get, but
you either already have the qualifications for the job or you don't. For the
interview, you should be concerned with presentation. Being calm, cool,
collected and well rested is one of the best ways to put your best foot
forward here.

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bsvalley
Carefully pick your clarifying questions. People always suggest to ask
clarifying questions and I think it's often seen as a negative thing in real
life (which is sad). Instead, repeat the problem out loud and write scenarios
on the whiteboard right away. Show that you've already started working on the
problem. If you ask too many questions up front you'll have to come up with a
perfect solution to redeem yourself.

Work your solution through various examples, cases, exceptions, etc. It will
show that you understand the complexity of a problem by mentioning all the
complex cases out loud. It's like saying "here is how you're trying to trap me
with this problem, I can finger point the trap". Now it's all about
translating that into a working function on the whiteboard. If you don't get
the working function, at least they know you're smart.

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trykondev
They will probably stress this to you before you begin the interview, but in
case they don't -- one of the things they really check for is that you to ask
many clarifying questions.

If you're given a problem, don't start solving it immediately -- instead, ask
about what kind of input (integers or strings or something else), ask about
limitations on the input (could be people's ages or student numbers), ask if
there is a certain way they would like you to handle a specific edge case, and
anything else you can think of.

They want to see that you are going to try and fully understand a problem
before starting to write a solution.

You're welcome to reach out if you have any specific questions. Good luck!

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mindcrash
In case you are catching up on this thread before your interview:

Here's an example of what they will ask you if when you apply for a job in the
AI team:

[https://medium.com/acing-ai/microsoft-ai-interview-
questions...](https://medium.com/acing-ai/microsoft-ai-interview-questions-
acing-the-ai-interview-be6972f790ea)

Here are some example questions which they will ask in general (hint: you will
definitely need some pretty deep insight in algorithms and data structures):

[https://www.interviewcake.com/microsoft-interview-
questions](https://www.interviewcake.com/microsoft-interview-questions)

Even more here:

[https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/microsoft-interview-
preparatio...](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/microsoft-interview-preparation/)

And here's a Quora question about how to prepare with a response from a SDET
(Microsoft-speak for "Test Engineer"):

[https://www.quora.com/How-should-I-prepare-for-a-
Microsoft-i...](https://www.quora.com/How-should-I-prepare-for-a-Microsoft-
interview)

Hope this helps, and good luck with your interview!

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downrightmike
Relax,and breathe before you answer. Ask them questions about what they do,
anything to get them talking like in a conversation and not an interview.

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jason_slack
Think about the questions you are asked. Answer calmly and honestly. If you
are not sure, say so. Review coding interview problems.

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parvatzar
Appreciate if you can share your experience at the interview. Good Luck!

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showsover
Thanks. I think it went tits up unfortunately.

This was apparently a general technical interview for a role which I
misunderstood. All questions about general Azure infrastructure (with which I
have no experience) instead of general C# / programming questions.

Lessons learned I guess.

~~~
Spoom
Sounds like a communication failure if they didn't tell you what the position
required.

~~~
norealidea
Or he didn't ask.

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albertLuth
how was it?

~~~
albertLuth
hope it was well

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arthurBrooks
You need to learn about the technical interview process. You need to prepare
Emotionally, Mentally & Technically You need to learn what to do and what not
to do during the interview. You need to learn how to solve algorithms on
whiteboard. You need to learn how to propose and implement alternative
solutions to a given problem. Checkout the following guide. It will teach you,
about all the points [http://www.codespaghetti.com/interview-
success](http://www.codespaghetti.com/interview-success)

