Microsoft Software Development Engineer II Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Nov 2010 in Bellevue, WA (took 3 weeks)

I was placed into the Employee Referral Program after being referred by a friend who works there. Two recruiters contacted me within a week to set up a telephone interview. I was then invited for an on-site interview within two weeks. The scheduling process was very disorganized and I was not informed until the day before my interview about my schedule. The on-site interview process itself was cloaked in mystery and I was not told how many interviews I would have during the day. Like I read somewhere, in spite of being interviewed by multiple people, you get to make only one first impression because the every interviewer passes on his views to the next interviewer. If your first interview goes badly, the following interviewers will have a poor impression of you even before you meet them.

The interviewers were cordial and asked mentally stimulating questions. The questions were a good mix of problem-solving and analytic thinking. Overall, I was impressed by the interviewers and enjoyed my conversations with them, but frustrated by everything else (recruiters, schedulers, etc)