Software Engineer (SC2) Interview Experience

I interviewed for an SC2 software engineer role on Microsoft's Experience + Devices team, focusing on Copilot integration into the Microsoft 365 suite. After I applied, I got a standard engineer screen that was pretty easy, then they moved quickly into a 4-round final loop over 2 days, which felt like they were on a hiring drive. The weird part was that every final-round interviewer was principal-level, and almost every round, even the system design and hiring manager rounds, was still basically coding. The hardest round by far was a file system prompt where I expected a standard system design, but they wanted a low-level design coded up with classes and multiple use cases in 45 minutes. I still have no official outcome because the recruiter ghosted me for a month after the loop, so honestly, this ended up being the worst interview experience I have had with any company.

I interviewed for an SC2 software engineer role on Microsoft's Experience + Devices team, focusing on Copilot integration into the Microsoft 365 suite. After I applied, I got a standard engineer screen that was pretty easy, then they moved quickly into a 4-round final loop over 2 days, which felt like they were on a hiring drive. The weird part was that every final-round interviewer was principal-level, and almost every round, even the system design and hiring manager rounds, was still basically coding. The hardest round by far was a file system prompt where I expected a standard system design, but they wanted a low-level design coded up with classes and multiple use cases in 45 minutes. I still have no official outcome because the recruiter ghosted me for a month after the loop, so honestly, this ended up being the worst interview experience I have had with any company.